Edward Rodwell, pioneer publisher with lots of wit

Two months after I started this column in 2015, a family friend and avid reader of my articles presented me with an autographed copy of a book ‘And so it goes’, a collection of anecdotes by Edward Rodwell, the prolific author and columnist.

Little did he know that I had been reading Edward Rodwell’s column “Coast Causerie” in the East African Standard, as it was then known, since my school days in the 1960s. I must admit that my writing has been greatly influenced by Edward Rodwell in his warm sense of humour, self-deprecating approach and his eye for the curious and sometimes contradictory in life.

Edward Rodwell was born in 1907 in Sittingbourne, Kent in England where his father was working in a furniture store. Later the family settled in Herne Bay and Edward was apprenticed to a local printer.

After five years, Edward was appointed manager of the press in 1926 by, which time he had learned “how to print, publish a book, do the bindings, and make the cover and even got to do a bit of writing”.

In 1933, he went to the London School of Journalism where he successfully applied for a job with the East African Standard newspaper group. Landing in Mombasa later that year, he was appointed managing director of the daily newspaper “The Mombasa Times”.

Judy Aldrick writes: “On arrival in Mombasa, he was appalled by the age and condition of the printing machinery with which he had to work, most of which dated back to 1902 when the newspaper had first started. The main production of the East African Standard had moved to Nairobi, leaving the old plant behind for the paper in Mombasa, which in 1933 had a circulation of just 380.

Reuters sent them a cable of some 300 words and the rest was concocted by Rodwell and his editorial staff and then printed on his antiquated press with the help of three equally aged Swahili printers who had been trained at the Heidelberg School of Printing before World War I.”

During World War II, Mombasa became an important Allied navy base after the fall of Singapore in 1942 and later as a troop collection point prior to the Burma Campaign.

Rodwell found himself meeting and interviewing important dignitaries and military commanders and his newspaper carried reports of increasing weight and international interest. It was he who was now cabling Reuters with important news communiques.

Laced with his trademark wit and humour, the stories catapulted sales of the newspaper as the population of the port town increased with service personnel engaged in the war.

In an effort to uplift the dreary spirits of the civilian population during the war, in November 1943 Rodwell introduced his column “Coast Causerie” in the Mombasa Times appearing under the pen name “The Watchman.” At first, he wrote about history, birds (of the feathered variety), beasts, languages, ancient monuments, excavation of coastal cities, almost forgotten Swahili legends, songs, peoples and their attractions. With time the column became more about Rodwell’s interest in the “off-beat story of strange occasions and the people involved”.

“There are writers who just give the bare bones of an incident and eschew any reference to colour, but I think the quaint, the sad and the merry circumstances of an occasion provide an important insight into the characters concerned”, he wrote in one piece.

“I am not an historian, but I study ancient and modern history with the object of finding occasions that provide a story worth telling, events that often show a light background to what has been a dark history in our part of the African continent,” he wrote in another piece.

Two publications also belong to this post-war era “Gedi the Lost City” (1948) and “Ivory, Apes and Peacocks” (1949).

Journalists had to be very careful about what they wrote during the Mau Mau years as newspapers were strictly censored. Rodwell resigned from The Mombasa Times in 1956 and joined The Nakuru -based Kenya Weekly Newspaper which was a paper with pro-settler views that did not always sit well with the Colonial government. Edward Rodwell’s column in that paper “Along the Waterfront” reported the unfolding political scene and how it affected the Coast. This newspaper also continued to host his column “Coast Causerie”.

Rodwell also became a radio broadcaster for Kenya Broadcasting Service (KBS) doing a weekly slot which lasted for 20 years earning him the title of the Alistair Cooke (Letter from America) of East Africa. “The Mombasa Times” went under in 1966 and “The Kenya Weekly News” in 1969 by which time the East African Standard had taken up the “Coast Causerie” column published every Thursday.

Edward Rodwell and his lovely wife (long suffering according to Rodwell) were long term residents in Mtwapa Creek. They took up Kenyan citizenship immediately after independence in 1963.

Rodwell started a public relations company and founded the Rodwell Press from where he edited and published house magazines for businesses at the Coast. He collected books and archival material which he meticulously documented and indexed.

Part of his collection was acquired by the Kenya National Archives in 1970. His remaining library continues to be a rich source of memorabilia for Mombasa and the Coast.

In 1993 Edward Rodwell earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records for his column “Coast Causerie” which had been running continuously for 50 years. In 1994, he was decorated with the Order of the Burning Spear. He is considered, in many quarters, to be the father of journalism in Kenya.