He once had a life in exile.
Haile Selassie resided in Bath, England's Fairfield House during his exile from 1936 to 1941. Behind the high wall of a fourteen-room Victorian house, the Emperor and Kassa Haile Darge had a morning stroll together. "Diplomatic history" is Haile Selassie's preferred genre of reading. But the 90,000-word account of his life that he diligently composed in Amharic occupies the majority of his serious time.
He spent a short time in Parkside, Wimbledon, and the Warne Hotel in Worthing before arriving to Fairfield House. For this occasion, Hilda Seligman erected a bust of Haile Selassie in the nearby Cannizaro Park, which is now a well-known Rastafarian destination in London. In the 1930s, Haile Selassie lived at the Abbey Hotel in Malvern, and the nieces and daughters of royal officials attended North Malvern's Clarendon Girls' School. He went to Holy Trinity Church services while living in Malvern.
During this time, Haile Selassie actively opposed Italian claims regarding Ethiopian resistance and the validity of the occupation. He denounced the horrors experienced by Ethiopian residents and spoke out against the destruction of places of worship and historical relics (including the theft of a 1,600-year-old base turret).
