“Flame and Song is a portrait of Uganda’s history as a poem. Philippa does more than use her father’s famous poem Building the Nation as a motif. She literally narrates the last five decades of Uganda’s existence as a country as if it were one coherent story, with all the expected and unexpected highs and lows.

For a Ugandan generation born and raised in and after the 1980s, to which I belong, Philippa has offered a personal tale of hope and pain that stirs a nostalgia about the things we did not find and a gratitude that we arrived later.”

“Philippa’s memoir explains us. She guides us back to the serenity of the early 1960s when Kampala is a sleepy place through to the unravelling leading into the savage 1970s. She shows us the splintering of families which has led to the creation of Ugandans with split nationalities. Fantastic.”

“In Flame and Song, Philippa tells the story of her family; born in Kampala surrounded by people who cared about each other and faced the usual issues families faced in the 1960s heading into the ‘70s; until forces beyond their walls began to wedge cracks into their well-knit lives and bring influences they had not bargained for, into the mix. It is the story of birth, growing up and discovering oneself.”