We thought it would be interesting to see if the British black experience in

“We thought it would be interesting to see if the British black experience in Africa would be different from the British white experience,” says Stephen Lambert, but “gender seems to be the bigger factor”.The children are missing their Playstations and are in shock over the lack of television. Daniel has a nine-kilometre walk to an English-speaking school, where the cane is in regular use. So far he has managed to stay out of trouble.The African experiment is, says Mr Lambert, the next stage in the development of the “manipulated documentary”, commonly known as reality TV The three-part series will be broadcast on Channel 4.. Elizabeth Kemp-Welch, social columnist: born London 14 July 1906; MBE 1986; married 1932 Capt Peter Kenward (one son; marriage dissolved 1942); died London 24 January 2001. Elizabeth Kemp-Welch, social columnist: born London 14 July 1906; MBE 1986; married 1932 Capt Peter Kenward (one son; marriage dissolved 1942); died London 24 January 2001.
Visitors to the fashion department of Harpers & Queen in the 1970s and 1980s, emerging from the corridors lined with the latest creations of Armani, Issey Miyake and Jasper Conran, would sometimes be surprised by the door to the office of the Social Editor, Betty Kenward. Frilly damask curtains obscured the glass panel behind which two secretaries worked full-time preparing the engagement books and lists of names that would emerge each month as Jennifer’s Diary. Kenward was the only member of staff who had her own office – even the editor and publisher were part of the open-plan scheme.

Peace and quiet were essential for the meticulous perusal of Debrett’s and Burke’s and the Almanach de Gotha.Betty Kenward invented the idea of Jennifer’s Diary in 1944, when she went to work part-time at the Tatler. A 38-year-old divorcée, she was well-connected enough to recognise the famous people she was to write about in her column for the next 48 years. She was so desperate for copy in the early weeks that she once stood outside the Ritz, pretending to wait for a bus, so that she could see who was going in and out “As I hoped, it worked well. I met and chatted to a number of friends, not naming, of course, those who had jumped the bus queue.” The “of course” is typical of her whole manner in describing the social world in which she believed so passionately. Good behaviour, diplomacy and discretion were the things she admired above all.Elizabeth Kemp-Welch was born on Bastille Day 1906, the first child of Brian Kemp-Welch and his wife Verena Venour.

She hated her mother, whom she described as “very pretty and very immoral”, but she inherited from her a love of racing and hunting. After the First World War, when she was sent to a finishing school in Brussels, Les Tourelles, where the other girls, all much older than she was, treated her “as a sort of freak”, she learned the first of several quite harsh lessons. She had eventually made friends with another English girl, but when she went to stay with the girl’s aunt and uncle, she was not allowed to share a room with her friend. “Her aunt knew of my mother, and that my mother was living with a man who was not her husband.”Back in England, Betty Kemp-Welch found life at her mother’s house unbearable, so she ran away and asked to be allowed to work for a distant relative, Miss Peter Green, who had a hat shop in Knightsbridge. Eventually her father moved back to London and asked her to live with him and run his house. During the 1920s she made friends with Barbara Cartland and her brother Ronald, and with the novelist Edgar Wallace.

He and his wife “Jim” took Betty on her first transatlantic voyage, on the SS Berengaria in 1929, and it was surely this trip that inspired in her the ambition to remain in the world of royal suites, cocktail parties, horse shows and charity balls. She met George Gershwin and David Niven, then unknown, and soon was dining and spending the weekends with those titled and landed characters to whom she became both chronicler and critic.In 1932 she married Peter Kenward, at St Margaret’s, Westminster. There were 10 bridesmaids and two pages, and several hundred guests. The reception was at the Mayfair, with Ambrose and his band playing This happy event did not reflect the tone of the marriage. At one dinner party, after 24 hours’ absence Peter Kenward arrived half-way through the evening, “Very drunk, with a bottle under each arm saying ‘Hello everyone, here I am with my babies’. The guests thought it quite funny, but I nearly died of embarrassment.”In 1938 she left her husband, taking her son Jim and his nanny to live in a tiny flat in Chelsea. Betty Kenward went to work for Vogue, running the Enquiry Desk.