Gerald Hanley; Novelist Examined Influence of War

Irish novelist Gerald Hanley, whose “The Consul at Sunset” and other books depicting the decline of the British empire were held up as model examinations of the influence of war on societal values, has died at 76.

It was learned Wednesday that Hanley died in Dun Laoghaire on Sept. 7 after what was described only as a short illness.

He was the younger brother of the late novelist James Hanley, who went to Kenya at 16 in 1932 to be a farmer in what was then a British colony.

At the outbreak of World War II, Gerald Hanley joined the Royal Irish Fusiliers, publishing his first book after the war, “Monsoon Victory.”

Hanley later worked for the J. Arthur Rank movie organization in India and Pakistan and for the British Broadcasting Corp.

In 1950, he went to live in Palumpar at the foot of the Himalayas in the Punjab and completed “The Consul at Sunset.” The book, published in 1951, is set in wartime Ethiopia. A tribal dispute erupts about use of water holes, with the chiefs opposed to each other and to Italian and British forces there.

His other books included “The Year of the Lion,” published in 1953, and “Drinkers of Darkness” in 1955, both set in Africa. “Without Love” was published in 1957 and “The Journey Homeward” in 1961.

“Gilligan’s Last Elephant” was made into the 1967 film “The Last Safari.”