Stanley Holloway five children, including the actor Julian Holloway. Holloway was born in Manor Park, Essex (now in the London Borough of Newham), the younger child and only son of George Augustus Holloway (1860–1919), a lawyer's clerk, and Florence May "née" Bell (1862–1913), a housekeeper and dressmaker. He was named after Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and for his search for David Livingstone. There were theatrical connections in the Holloway family going back to Charles Bernard (1830–1894), an actor and theatre manager, who was the brother of Holloway's maternal grandmother. Holloway's paternal grandfather, Augustus
British diaspora in Africa proclaimed a British colony in 1843. Following the defeat of the Boers in the Second Boer War in 1902, Britain annexed the Boer Republics of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State. Scottish medical missionary David Livingstone famously explored Africa, and it is believed he was the first European to set eyes on Victoria Falls in 1855. He is a key character in African history, being one of the first well-known Britons to believe his heart was in Africa. In the late nineteenth century, the discovery of gold in the Witwatersrand and diamonds in Kimberley encouraged further settlement by