James G Willson sailed to East Africa in 1946 as an infant with his sister and parents to settle in Kenya. After secondary school at Seaford College in England, he pursued a life in tourism which included mountain guiding on Mt. Kenya; rehabituating Joy Adamson’s cheetah Pippa to the wild and leading professional safaris through out East Africa. 

In 1977 he joined the hospitality industry managing many of Kenya’s most successful hotels, including seven years in the Taita Taveta area before semi-retiring in 2008 to his home on Diani Beach.

James encourages and supports community interest, to help discover and promote the living history of the many battlefields, forts & military camps of the East African Campaign of 1914 to 1916, in the area around the Tsavo West National Park & the South Coast of Kenya. Though today they are battered & weathered, they still stand in testimony of a bygone and forgotten campaign. 

He continues in a consultant capacity to the hospitality industry while furthering community interests to discover and promote the true history of the battlefields, forts and military camps, which though battered and weathered today, still stand in testimony of a bygone and forgotten campaign.