John Nottingham
British colonial administrator
John Cato Nottingham (25 February 1928 – 2018) was a British-born Kenyan colonial administrator, political activist, and publicist.
Early life
John Cato Nottingham was born on 25 February 1928 in Coventry, United Kingdom. He was the son of Captain Eric Cato Nottingham, who had served in the British military in the colonies of Nigeria and the Gold Coast. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and, after graduating in 1946, was conscripted into the British Army, being subsequently stationed in Northern Ireland and Germany. In 1949 he left the army and enrolled in Oxford University, studying politics, philosophy and economics.
At the urging of his father, he applied for a job with the British colonial service. In July 1952 the service accepted his application and made him a cadet on probation, while he received specialised training at Oxford for a colonial posting, including instruction in Kiswahili.
Colonial administration career
Nottingham traveled by ship to Mombasa, Kenya Colony in December 1952 and was immediately appointed District Officer of Nyeri.
Later life
For several years Nottingham was Publishing Director at East African Publishing House, helping General China write his two books on Mau Mau and publishing Song of Lawino by Okot p'Bitek. Nottingham later founded his own publishing company, Transafrica Publishers.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q73062212. VIAF identifies the subject as 193033198. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 2018, 1946 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Nottingham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.