Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Eight records
that's what I like to have as my swan song. When they carry me out feet first, that's what I'd like to go out singing, unmusically.
Symphony No. 3 in E-Flat Major, Op. 55 "Eroica"Favourite
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
it has nice associations because my wife and I were in at New Year's Eve we were at the concert in Berlin and heard this cut.
I always think about my wife when I hear the words to this, and this is one of the things that I sing in the shop. This is the one that she does listen to.
I love all his stuff so much that the choice was quite arbitrary.
I just love the sound of the pipe, that sort of beautiful, mysterious sound. And the cut I've chosen is the theme from Evita because, you know, I've seen that uh musical three or four times and loved it.
The keepsakes
The book
I can read that endlessly. You know, one word leads to another and you've got all the references from English literature as well. So it's not only just the words, it's it's all sort of beautiful references back to archaic English and everything.
The luxury
big brass bedstead and feather mattress
my big brass bedstead from home and the feather mattress. You know, it's the size of a polo field and it's it's very, very comfortable.
In conversation
Presenter asks
How far do your colonial roots go back?
Well, my mother's side of the family were pioneers in Zambia, in Northern Rhodesia. My grandmother was the first white woman on the Copper Belt. … But that's not very far back. That's sort of the turn of the century.
Presenter asks
What do you remember about your childhood [in the bush]?
My family were my father particularly was very keen on hunting and the bush life. … my earliest memories are going out with thirty or forty bearers and in in great style. We used to set up camp with four or five tents and a big thorn tree scareum round the camp to keep the lions out in the evening and the the camp fire at night and the sound of lions sort of just over the hill and you know you cuddle down in your stretcher as as a child listening to all the little night apes in the trees above you and the owls hooting. It was tremendous, it really was.
Presenter asks
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 1
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
Speaker 1
For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.
Presenter
This week, our castaway is the writer of best-selling adventure novels, Wilbur Smith. Wilbur, could you endure isolation for a long time?
Wilbur Smith
I think I could. I've always been a sort of solitary bird, a a loner. I think to be a writer you have to be. How much does music mean to you? My tastes in music have always been very uh lowbrow, but my wife is interested in in better music and classical music, and she's slowly educating me. I do like my music to have lyrics. I enjoy a good lyric, you know, words being as important to me as the music. But I work with music going most of the time. Do you? I have four or five tapes, my favourite tapes, which just play softly in the background in my study when I'm working.
Presenter
Have you any musical skill? Do you do you play an instrument? I mean, even the mouth organ or something like that?
Wilbur Smith
I would starve to death if I had to try and make a living yeah. No, I I really haven't. I can't carry a tune. Even in the Shahs, my wife sort of locks the door, you know, so she doesn't have to listen when I'm singing.
Presenter
Listen when I'm singing. Did it take you long to make your list of just eight discs?
Wilbur Smith
It didn't. Within 10 or 15 minutes, they came to hand. Most of the ones that I've chosen are on the tapes that I have in my car and in the study. So they were naturals, they were all old friends. What's the first one? The first one is one of my great favourites, is Frank Sinatra. And the cut I've chosen is my way because that's what I like to have as my swan song. When they carry me out feet first, that's what I'd like to go out singing, unmusically.
Presenter
Without exemption.
Presenter
I plan
Presenter
Each charted course.
Presenter
Each careful step
Presenter
On the byway
Presenter
More
Presenter
Much more than this.
Presenter
I did it.
Presenter
Frank Sinatre, My Way.
Presenter
Now you were born in what was then Rhodesia.
Wilbur Smith
That's right, northern Rhodesia.
Presenter
How far do your colonial roots go back?
Wilbur Smith
Well, my mother's side of the family were pioneers in Zambia, in Northern Rhodesia. My grandmother was the first white woman on the Copper Belt.
Speaker 4
Mm-hmm.
Wilbur Smith
But that's not very far back. That's sort of the turn of the century. And uh as so often happened in those days, my grandmother returned to England when my mother was born. So uh although she is pioneer stock, she is English born.
Presenter
Now, your childhood was fairly adventurous. I have read that you shot your first lion when you were thirteen.
Wilbur Smith
Yes, it's not one of the things I'm terribly proud of because now I'm very much against hunting of mammals.
Presenter
But those are different outlook.
Wilbur Smith
A different outlook? Oh yes, there certainly was. My family were my father particularly was very keen on hunting and the bush life. You know, really hunting wasn't just going out and killing animals. It was the whole thing of going out in safari and when I was you know my earliest memories are going out with thirty or forty bearers and in in great style. We used to set up camp with four or five tents and a big thorn tree scareum round the camp to keep the lions out in the evening and the the camp fire at night and the sound of lions sort of just over the hill and you know you cuddle down in your stretcher as as a child listening to all the little night apes in the trees above you and the owls hooting. It was tremendous, it really was.
Presenter
Were you brought up in the bush or or in a town?
Wilbur Smith
Well, my father was working on the Copperbelt, which was actually a very small town. It was just a mining camp. And so the bush was a hundred yards away. I used to get on my bicycle and be in the bush in in no time. All my friends, well a lot of my friends, were little African boys of the same age. So we used to go off, you know, make slingshots and go hunting birds and cooking them over a fire and that sort of thing. Then later on my father had a ranch and that was sort of really the country life. You know, we had uh nearly 35,000 acres of ground. There was cattle running on it, but game running with the cattle. And it was a marvellous life for a small boy. That's the time when I used to hunt too. But, you know, again, I've never was a scorter, I must emphasise that. And as you say, I shot my first lion when I was thirteen and it was a big ritual thing. All the Africans daubed me with blood, you know, and carried me round sort of shoulder high. And it was a great life for a small boy.
Presenter
Strange, the same ritual as in fox hunting in this country.
Presenter
We all bright at school.
Wilbur Smith
My father, when he saw my first school report, said, My boy, let's hope you're going to be lucky in life, because otherwise you're not going to make it. No, I was good at the subjects that interested me, which were English, history, geography.
Presenter
Native
Wilbur Smith
But the science subjects, I looked at mathematics and I said, I don't understand it, I don't want to understand it and that's how I I went through life. You went to the University of Rhodes. What did you read? Commerce, economics and accounting.
Presenter
Economic
Presenter
Was that your ambition, Comet?
Wilbur Smith
No, but it was my father's ambition. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a a journalist and a reporter. And he said to me, Don't be a damn fool, you'll starve to death. So do something useful. So I had to go and got my B com and went into accounting. Let's have your second record. What's that? It's uh Dave Rubeck. And the cut that I like particularly is Take Five.
Speaker 4
Hello.
Speaker 4
Da da da da da da da.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Presenter
Dave Rubeck, take five. So you were a Bachelor of Commerce. What was your first job?
Wilbur Smith
The first job I ever had was with a Goodyan rubber company.
Wilbur Smith
As with the grandiose title of Executive Trainee, which meant I was an office boy.
Wilbur Smith
And um I didn't last in that one very long, and then I went and worked with my father.
Presenter
Yeah.
Wilbur Smith
Looking after the the estate, the farm? No, at that stage he'd sold the farm and he had a metal factory, a sheet metal works. And that was when I returned to Rhodesia, which is now Zimbabwe, but was then Rhodesia. And did what? I just ran the office, you know, did the books and did uh the selling, you know, it was just a two-man operation really.
Presenter
And then who had a spell as an income tax man.
Wilbur Smith
Yes. The factory didn't work out all that well, so I went into government having uh qualified as an accountant into the income tax department.
Presenter
What's taxation like in in South Africa? Is it as punitive as it is here?
Wilbur Smith
It's always rotten to have to pay hard w one money to the government, but it's getting higher all the time, you know, and we do have things like VAT, so that by the time the money that sticks to your hand, not very much of it stays behind.
Presenter
No
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter
Got
Presenter
Were you doing any bits and pieces of journalism?
Wilbur Smith
I started about that time when I was in the income tax department to write short stories. With success? They started to be accepted in magazines and tremendous sums of money, like five guineas, twelve guineas when I was lucky.
Presenter
Well, never mind, you've started.
Wilbur Smith
Never mind you've started. So let's break off for record number three. Well the next one is totally different. It's Beethoven and it's Herbert von Curian with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and it has nice associations because my wife and I were in at New Year's Eve we were at the concert in Berlin and heard this cut.
Presenter
The opening of Beethoven's third symphony, the Eroica, Herbert von Karian conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. Now you were sitting in that office sending nasty little buff envelopes to anybody, and writing short stories. When did you write your first book, and what was it?
Wilbur Smith
What happened was that my marriage at that stage went on the rocks and I was divorced and had no money, so I had nothing to do in the evening, so I started writing a book and I got so involved in it that I used to take the manuscript to work with me. And fortunately, at this stage of the game, I had a little department all to myself in the income tax department dealing with deceased estates. So I used to let the two ladies who were under me get on with the war whilst I wrote my book. And not only that, I wrote it on government stationery.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Now, how did you get on? Is is there a a flourishing publishing business in South Africa? Did you know where to send it?
Wilbur Smith
No, I didn't at all. What happened uh was having written the thing, you know, I looked at it and it was this great shaggy heap of paper and I um got the artist's and writer's yearbook from the library because I couldn't afford to buy my own copy and there was a whole list of agents in the one page so I took a pen and sort of picked one with a pen. South African agents.
Presenter
Both f
Wilbur Smith
And I sent the manuscript off to her and within about ten days or so I got a wire back to say that the book had been accepted by William Heinemans here in in London, which was fantastic. I think I can't remember the advance I had, but I think it was a hundred pounds, which was an enormous sum of money to me.
Wilbur Smith
And then within ten days or two weeks after that, there was another cable to say that the Reader's Digest had taken the condensed book drive. So I immediately gave up work, and I haven't worked since.
Wilbur Smith
Yeah, this was a marvelous I mean you hadn't tried before
Presenter
4.
Wilbur Smith
Oh, you haven't? Well, we don't actually mention the other effort I had. I had written a novel before that effort. Well, tell me about that one. Well, it was called.
Presenter
Oh, tell me a
Wilbur Smith
They first make mad, you know, from those whom the gods wish to destroy.
Wilbur Smith
and it had all the faults of the first novel.
Wilbur Smith
I've got them out of my system.
Presenter
I got them out of my system. Did you send it round?
Wilbur Smith
I did, and had rejections from some of the best houses in London and New York. And I realized, of course, that one could never make a living at writing after that, so I put it away in a in a trunk. Actually I found it again recently.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Wilbur Smith
And as a penance, took it into the lavatory and sort of read through it, blushing most of the time, and saying, Oh, did I really write that?
Wilbur Smith
But that's the one we don't really talk about.
Presenter
This first one was called The first one that was accepted was called When a Land Feeds. And that was the one you sold the contensation rights. You sold the film rights to, didn't you? Yes.
Wilbur Smith
Yes, Stanley Baker bought the film rights to it, and uh th it was never made into a movie.
Presenter
It was never made.
Wilbur Smith
But uh I think the property is still sort of floating round film studios somewhere in the world.
Presenter
Yes, you got the money whether it was made or not. That's true. And you got out of the income tax business.
Wilbur Smith
That's true.
Presenter
That's all so true. Now let's break at this happy point for record number four.
Wilbur Smith
Hello
Wilbur Smith
The one I've picked here is Don Williams, and the cut is You're My Best Friend. Why'd you choose this?
Wilbur Smith
Well, I always think about my wife when I hear the words to this, and this is one of the things that I sing in the shop. This is the one that she does listen to.
Speaker 4
You're my friend.
Speaker 4
Well
Presenter
I'm hungry.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Wilbur Smith
Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Wilbur Smith
You must
Presenter
Shelter from Trouble Wind
Wilbur Smith
You might
Speaker 4
Thinker
Presenter
In life Close.
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 4
Uh
Presenter
But most of all
Presenter
You're my best friend.
Presenter
Don Williams, you're my best friend.
Presenter
Your second novel was banned.
Wilbur Smith
It was called The Dark of the Sun and it was set in the Congo during the revolution there and there was a story of a band of mercenaries. It was banned in South Africa, I think, for sexual descriptions and violence. But you must remember that the standards in South Africa are totally different to those that exist in other part of the civilized world. And books get banned very easily. Particularly at that time. It's not quite as bad as it was then, but they've got a strange system of censorship there.
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter
Adjutant.
Presenter
And presumably it was not in any sense uh a political censorship because you don't write about politics.
Wilbur Smith
No, I very seldom even glance off politics. I find politics really rather boring. And one of the things about politics is the thing that is a burning issue at one minute, six months later people have forgotten that it ever existed. And I like to busy myself or concern myself rather with the old values that are always interesting to human beings, you know, power, money, sex, that sort of thing.
Presenter
And
Wilbur Smith
A lot of action and a story that moves forward fast.
Presenter
It's not your
Wilbur Smith
Uh
Presenter
I only book Boom
Wilbur Smith
In battle.
Presenter
And there
Wilbur Smith
No, nearly all of mine have been banned at one time or another. But they've got a strange system there where they ban a book and then two years later you can appeal against it. So that uh you know it's an ongoing thing. Every two years you you come up before the board again. It always amuses me how something that was obscene at one point in time two years later can be uh totally acceptable. How many novels have you written though? It's sixteen altogether.
Wilbur Smith
in something like
Wilbur Smith
17 and a half, 18 years. So it's virtually a a book a year for 16 years.
Presenter
All of them with a South African background.
Wilbur Smith
No. I would say about half of them are set in Africa.
Wilbur Smith
And um there are others that are a sort of a wider range, but Africa is the thing that I know best and love best and and write about best.
Presenter
Sixteen novels, and they're all in print at this moment.
Wilbur Smith
That is the marvellous thing about having a good publisher.
Wilbur Smith
And it's a good feeling to go into an airport somewhere in a in an obscure part of the world and and see them all lined up, you know, all the jackets.
Presenter
I'm sure it is. Record number five.
Wilbur Smith
Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Wilbur Smith
Well, I've I've chosen the Oscar Peterson trio. I love all his stuff so much that the choice was quite arbitrary.
Presenter
In fact, which one did you settle for?
Wilbur Smith
I settled finally for cheek to cheek.
Presenter
The Oscar Peterson Trio Cheek to Cheek.
Presenter
You set yourself your first novel for a film. How many films have been made of your books?
Wilbur Smith
Let's think about it quickly. There was Gold Mine. Yes, that became gold. That was gold, yes. And then there was Shout at the Devil with Roger Moore and Lee Marvin. And The Dark of the Sun, which was with Rod Taylor. And that's it. Yes. But um as you we mentioned most of them have been bought by film companies but in the present climate you know things are pretty tough in the film business as they are generally.
Presenter
Beautiful.
Presenter
Is there a film business? we asked. How much work did you do on the film script?
Presenter
Yeah.
Wilbur Smith
I worked on the scripts of Shout at the Devil and of Gold, but you know, I'm actually pleased that I didn't go slanted towards the film uh industry because it's it's tempting to do so. It's tempting to start writing film scripts rather than books and then change them into books afterwards. And I I think that that way it lies disaster. And you know, when you write a book, a novel, it's a team of one, it's you. You get all the kudos and you take all the brick bracket that's thrown at you. But if you end up as a writer of film scripts or books that are easily translated into films,
Wilbur Smith
You're very low down in the hier hierarchy, you know, in in the pecking order. Everybody comes in front of you, including the clapper loader and the and the tea girl. So uh I'm glad that I write books and not film scripts.
Presenter
You mentioned Goldmine, which became the film Gold. I was very impressed with that with the amount of research that obviously you had done. A tremendous deal of, to me, convincing technical stuff about mining.
Wilbur Smith
Yes, well I went and actually lived on one of the big South African gold mines for several weeks. I went on shift, I was in the Stopes with the black miners and it really is a fascinating proposition, such an enormous amount of human endeavor and ingenuity to go down miles, literally miles into the earth and support j just the for instance the refrigeration, the air cooling system, because when you go down to those depths, of course the earth is hot and they have to pump air down from the surface and cool it. So it's a you know, it's literally hundreds of millions of pounds investment in these huge mines.
Presenter
You've done a lot of travelling on your researches.
Wilbur Smith
Yes, I enjoy travelling. My wife enjoys travelling as well. And so if I have to write a book if I have to mention Israel or or Paris or or Florida,
Wilbur Smith
It's an excuse to go then. Of course.
Presenter
Uh Uh
Wilbur Smith
Uh
Presenter
Do you sometimes employ a professional researcher to dig stuff out for you?
Wilbur Smith
You sometimes employ
Wilbur Smith
Yes, I do, full-time professional researcher. That's my wife. She just gets her board and lodging there, you know, and don't pay much. But really, she's so good. If I need something and I'll say to her, Look, I want to know about so-and-so, and she'll go down to the library and dig things out. Or if I want to go on to, say, an oil rig or a salvage tug, it's so much better to send a pretty girl down to talk to the people and break the ice with them, you know. So she does that sort of thing. And she smooths the way for me, and I follow like a gentleman.
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Now all this African local law which is throughout your books, do you speak any African dialect?
Wilbur Smith
Not as well as I would like to. I speak this sort of lingua franca of Africa. They call it funigaloi, um, chilapa lapa, which is a mixture of many African languages based mostly on on the uh coastal Swahili and uh the Zulu. It's the language that they use on the gold mines and wherever there are many African people of different tribes together, because they can't speak each other's dialects, you know. It'd be an interesting thing, I must do it, just to find out how many dialects there are in Africa, even in southern Africa.
Wilbur Smith
But uh I can get along. If I get into uh say the Botswana bush, I can usually find someone in a village who I can communicate with.
Presenter
And you can understand Afrikaans.
Wilbur Smith
I understand it better than I speak it, but I can certainly uh get along fairly well in Afrikaans.
Presenter
Record number six.
Wilbur Smith
Well, I've picked uh Georges Saint Fere because I just love the sound of the pipe, that sort of beautiful, mysterious sound. And the cut I've chosen is the theme from Evita because, you know, I've seen that uh musical three or four times and loved it.
Presenter
Don't cry for me, Argentina, Georgi Zamfia.
Presenter
Wilbury, what's your working ground? Do you work regular hours?
Wilbur Smith
Discipline is absolutely essential.
Wilbur Smith
You know, if you had to just wait until inspiration came, the tuna would be running out in the bay and inspiration would drift away whilst you went fishing, or, you know, your power would drift up and you'd sit in the garden and drink beer with him. It has to be office hours, eight o'clock till five.
Presenter
I don't know.
Presenter
Do you work straight on the typewriter?
Wilbur Smith
No, I don't tap at all. I've got these calluses on my two fingers of my right hand from a ballpoint pen. I put it all down in longhand.
Presenter
How many words is a good day?
Wilbur Smith
There's work.
Wilbur Smith
It depends. If I'm writing dialogue, it'll be much less than descriptive action sequences, you know, because you really have to think about each one. But if I can do uh
Wilbur Smith
Five thousand words. That's a pretty good day.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
There's a great variation in the length of your books.
Wilbur Smith
Particularly the earlier ones tended to be much shorter. Say gold mine for instance and that. But nowadays I I seem to have to need uh more canvas to lay my thoughts on.
Presenter
How do you relax? Um you swim, I know, and fish. Any field games? Do you play golf?
Wilbur Smith
No, I used to play golf, but I found it was terribly time consuming, particularly that nineteenth hole. And so we walk a tremendous amount. We are terribly keen on wildlife, particularly bird life. My wife is a photographer. She loves uh wildlife photography. I don't I used to do it, but I find now it gives me double vision looking through that little lens finder the whole time. So what I do is I'm the one who who uh climbs up the trees or, you know, drives the vehicle up to a lion or an elephant or whatever it is. My sort of selfish hobby is is fishing. I was talking all the time about anti-blood sports and that, but there I am naughty. I do fish. For instance, I'd just been to Australia where I caught a black marlin of a thousand pounds in weight, which is
Speaker 1
Mm.
Presenter
The big fish?
Wilbur Smith
Well it was fifteen feet long. But on the other hand I caught another nine marlin, all eight or nine hundred pounds in weight, which I cut loose and released to let swim away free.
Presenter
Nine hundred pounds in wa wait, that's underweight. You throw them back.
Wilbur Smith
Yes, so there's a tiddler's under a thousand pounds.
Presenter
There are a thousand
Wilbur Smith
Yeah.
Presenter
You're having a year off.
Wilbur Smith
Yes, marvelous. It could become a way of life. At the end of this year, I turned fifty, and I as we said earlier on in the programme, I've written sixteen books in virtually sixteen years. And I feel I deserve it. So we've taken a year to swan round the world, go to all the places we should have been to, but never where we've been up the Nile to Luxor to the temples of Karnak and Valley of the Kings. We've been on Safari in Kenya, we've been to India and Australia and the Seychelles, and we're off on our way now to Alaska to go and fish for salmon. So it's absolutely a memorable year. It'll be, you know, the gem of my life.
Speaker 4
David.
Presenter
You've given us a few hints about where future books will relate, possibly.
Wilbur Smith
Yeah. Another record. I have picked now Gershwin because I I enjoy him so much, and it's a cut from the Rhapsody in Blue.
Presenter
Totherick
Presenter
George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the composer at the piano and Paul Whiteman's band a recording from the twenties.
Presenter
Wilbur, you're used to tropical living. You can hunt and fish. You should be able to cope on a tropical island. I I hope so, yes. You could rig up a hut of some sort. Yes. That could.
Presenter
Your good camp fire cook?
Wilbur Smith
I've done it very often. I enjoy cooking breakfast over a camp fire. Are you a good navigator? Would you build a craft of some sort and set off? Yes, I have done a course in astronavigation and I have my pilot's license, so I can do cross country and all that sort of thing.
Presenter
Oh, marvellous We can't wait to send you
Presenter
It's back in twenty-four hours.
Presenter
Your last record.
Wilbur Smith
My last record is again one of my favorite uh vocalists, is Natking Cole, and we've chosen Rambling Rose as a good rollicking version of his.
Speaker 4
Oh, I love you.
Presenter
What?
Presenter
Love change.
Presenter
You can cling to.
Presenter
All ram late.
Speaker 4
And roll
Presenter
Nat King Cole, Ramblin' Rose. If you could take only one disc out of the eight.
Wilbur Smith
I think it'd have to be Beethoven. Although I enjoy the lyrics of of some of them, I think they'd drive you mad after the first six months, but uh you know, you can live with Beethoven.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
And you're allowed one luxury, one item of no practical use, which would give you pleasure to have with you.
Wilbur Smith
Now that's a rough one, but I had a short list of two. One was a table setting of silver and crystal and linen, so that I when I had a That will give you a dinner jacket as well. Right. I can imagine if I have to eat a raw fish and drink coconut juice that I would have it in crystal. But finally I decided on my big brass bedstead from home and the feather mattress. You know, it's the size of a polo field and it's it's very, very comfortable.
Presenter
All right, we'll arrange for a waterproof plastic cover. And one book, you already have the standard issue of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare.
Wilbur Smith
Well, I had a short list of Plutarch's Lives and the complete Oxford English Dictionary, and I s finally decided on the dictionary because I can read that endlessly. You know, one word leads to another and you've got all the references from English literature as well. So it's not only just the words, it's it's all sort of beautiful references back to archaic English and everything.
Presenter
Right, it shall be yours. And thank you, Wilbur Smith, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.
Wilbur Smith
I enjoyed it very much. Thank you, Roy. Goodbye, everyone.
Speaker 1
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Was it your ambition to go into commerce?
No, but it was my father's ambition. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a a journalist and a reporter. And he said to me, Don't be a damn fool, you'll starve to death. So do something useful. So I had to go and got my B com and went into accounting.
Presenter asks
When did you write your first book, and what was it?
What happened was that my marriage at that stage went on the rocks and I was divorced and had no money, so I had nothing to do in the evening, so I started writing a book and I got so involved in it that I used to take the manuscript to work with me. And fortunately, at this stage of the game, I had a little department all to myself in the income tax department dealing with deceased estates. So I used to let the two ladies who were under me get on with the war whilst I wrote my book. And not only that, I wrote it on government stationery.
Presenter asks
Why was your second novel [The Dark of the Sun] banned?
It was banned in South Africa, I think, for sexual descriptions and violence. But you must remember that the standards in South Africa are totally different to those that exist in other part of the civilized world. And books get banned very easily. Particularly at that time.
Presenter asks
Do you sometimes employ a professional researcher to dig stuff out for you?
Yes, I do, full-time professional researcher. That's my wife. She just gets her board and lodging there, you know, and don't pay much. But really, she's so good. If I need something and I'll say to her, Look, I want to know about so-and-so, and she'll go down to the library and dig things out.
“I've always been a sort of solitary bird, a a loner. I think to be a writer you have to be.”
“I find politics really rather boring. And one of the things about politics is the thing that is a burning issue at one minute, six months later people have forgotten that it ever existed. And I like to busy myself or concern myself rather with the old values that are always interesting to human beings, you know, power, money, sex, that sort of thing.”
“when you write a book, a novel, it's a team of one, it's you. You get all the kudos and you take all the brick bracket that's thrown at you. But if you end up as a writer of film scripts or books that are easily translated into films, you're very low down in the hier hierarchy, you know, in in the pecking order.”
“Discipline is absolutely essential. You know, if you had to just wait until inspiration came, the tuna would be running out in the bay and inspiration would drift away whilst you went fishing”