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Denis Hills

Teacher, Traveller, Author, Adventurer Born 8th November 1913 - Died 26th April 2004

Biography

The Spectator called Denis Hills 'A hero of our times' but he is probably best remembered as the man Idi Amin condemned to death by firing squad for describing Amin as a 'black Nero' and a 'village tyrant'. The Queen interceded on Hills's behalf, and the then Foreign Secretary, James Callaghan, flew out to Kampala to bring Hills home.

Denis Hills was born in the Birmingham suburb of Moseley. He attended King Edward's School, Birmingham before going on to Lincoln College, Oxford in 1932 to read PPE. In 1935 he left Oxford to travel through Germany funding himself by writing for the Birmingham Post.

Returning to England he worked briefly at Shell Mex before moving to Poland in l937 as English editor of a cultural magazine. Hills book Return to Poland showed his fascination with pre-war Poland and in l939 he moved to Warsaw to teach English. At the outbreak of war he moved to Romania where Hills worked with the British Council. He was for a time seconded to General Kopanski's Polish Carpathian Lancers Brigade, and then to the King's Own Royal Regiment. Polish speaking he joined the 5th Kresowa Division in Iraq and Palestine before being sent to Italy in 1944.

When the war was over Hills became an interpreter and liaison officer with the Soviet military mission at Taranto. After being demobbed he taught English in Germany and restless by nature cycled from the Arctic Circle to Salonika. In l955 he moved to Turkey teaching English in Ankara before becoming an instructor at the Technical University. In 1963 he moved to Uganda teaching at Makerere University in Kampala when in Idi Amin sieed power in 1971. Hills spoke out regarding Amin in the book he was writing, The White Pumpkin and was arrested in April 1975 charged with espionage and sedition, tried and condemned to death. 1981 Hills played himself in the film The Rise and Fall of Idi AminRise_and_Fall_of_Idi_Amin

He returned to Africa in 1976, travelling through Southern Rhodesia which was the subject of his book The Last Days of White Rhodesia In 1982 he taught in Nairobi.

In 1985 he returned to Poland unfortunately he was summarily expelled as a result of a piece in The Daily Telegraph's Peterborough column, in which he was described as travelling through Poland in order to write a "less than complimentary book about the Communist regime".

Denis Hills had a daughter by his first wife Dunia Lesmianowna, daughter of Polish symbolist poet Boleslaw Lesmian, and two sons by his second wife Ingrid Jan.


Books

  • My Travels in Turkey (Pub: George Allen & Unwin 1964)
  • Man with a Lobelia Flute (Pub: George Allen & Unwin 1969)
  • The White Pumpkin (Pub: George Allen and Unwin 1976)
  • Rebel People (Pub: Africana Pub.Co.1978)
  • The Last Days of White Rhodesia (Pub: Chatto and Windus 1981)
  • The Rock of the Wind: A Return to Africa (Pub: Africana Pub.Co.1984)
  • Return to Poland (Pub: The Bodley Head Ltd 1988)
  • Tyrants And Mountains: A Reckless Life (Pub: John Murray Publishers Ltd 1992)



Denis Hills

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