Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since this short book was first published. So much has happened in this time. In 1942, the book involved presentation that I described as 'history shading into legend'. Today, we in Kenya are making our own history, as an independent Republic. In the dark years of the war, when this work was written, social studies might have seemed absurdly academic, were it not for the living faith of a Christian society. A generation later, we find a new perspective, a greater and more universal enlightenment, brought about by swifter communications and mass media which probe into and make familiar all the social patterns of our human family.

In his Foreword of My People of Kikuyu: And, The Life of Chief Wangombe (1966), Oxford University Press.