Jomo Kenyatta by those who met him. Referring to Kenyatta's appearance in 1920s Kenya, Murray-Brown stated the leader presented himself to Europeans as "an agreeable if somewhat seedy 'Europeanized' native" and to indigenous Africans as "a sophisticated man-about-town about whose political earnestness they had certain reservations". Simon Gikandi argued that Kenyatta, like a number of his contemporaries in the Pan-African movement, was an "Afro-Victorian", someone whose identity had been shaped "by the culture of colonialism and colonial institutions", especially those of the Victorian era. During the 1920s and 1930s, Kenyatta cultivated the image of a "colonial gentleman"; in England, he displayed "pleasant
Jomo Kenyatta London took to wearing a fez and cloak and carrying a silver-topped black cane. He adopted his surname, "Kenyatta", after the name of a beaded belt he often wore in early life. As President he collected a variety of expensive cars. Murray-Brown noted that Kenyatta had the ability to "appear all things to all men", also displaying a "consummate ability to keep his true purposes and abilities to himself", for instance concealing his connections with communists and the Soviet Union from both members of the British Labour Party and Kikuyu figures at home. This deviousness was sometimes interpreted as dishonesty