Untamed heart; From the prim lawns of Eton to the wild grasses of Africa, Denys Finch Hatton always sought the next adventure, in life as in love.(Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton)(Book review)

Byline: Jean Nathan

If English aristocrat, soldier, athlete, aviator, nonconformist, and lover extraordinaire Denys Finch Hatton (1887-1931) is known at all in our era, it's thanks to the 1985 film Out of Africa, the tale of his twelve-year love affair in Kenya with the Danish writer Karen Blixen, a.k.a. Isak Dinesen. While Robert Redford gets the gorgeousness right, he misses the high-gloss Etonian tones. In Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton (Random House), author Sara Wheeler proves she's better poised than Hollywood to sort through the complexities of this singularly romantic life. Finch Hatton's idyllic but peripatetic childhood as an earl's son set the template for the restless wandering that would characterize his adulthood. In his early 20s, the promise of freedom lured him to British East Africa. "His experience of a youthful paradise," Wheeler writes, "allowed him to believe in the African dream." Once there, he discovered bohemian women and, later, flying. These became the defining triad of his existence. Although a loner of the first order, Finch Hatton had immense charisma and a generous capacity for friendship. "As for charm," wrote Beryl Markham, the aviatrix and author of West with the Night, who replaced Blixen in his affections, ...