Denys Finch Hatton was an English aristocrat, big-game hunter, and one of the first people to fly a small aircraft over the Kenyan highlands purely for the joy of seeing the land from above. He and Karen Blixen fell deeply in love during her years on the farm, and their relationship — restless, unconventional, and never quite settled — sits at the emotional center of Out of Africa.

Denys died in a plane crash in 1931, and was buried in the Ngong Hills he loved so much — a loss that shaped the final, most affecting chapters of Blixen's memoir, and one still remembered today through the book and the film it inspired.