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List of Books by the host of this website;
currently being stored here.
Editors Under Fire - the role of the South African English-language Press through 43 years of Apartheid
Conflict and the Press - the views of leading international editors and publishers on threatened Press Freedom.
Telling it Like it Was* - a hundred years of SA history in contemporary news reports and photographs
Bedside Reading* (1), (2) & (3) - selected light pieces by journalists of The Star, Johannesburg in anual editions during the 1980s.
Champagne Peaches and Pennywhistles** - the story of Eric Gallo and the history of South Africa's music industry
Cutting Through the Buffalo Bulldust, on the Lewis & Clark Trail - An account of a six-week ride across America, following the pioneers who were despatched by Pres Jefferson to discover the hinterland when the US was only 20 years old.
We traced the journey to the Pacific on the expedition's 200th anniversary.
BOOKS ON HUMOUR, TRAVELS AND SHORT STORIES
A Walk on the Wild Side - light memoirs; humour; darker short stories
The Itch of the Twitch - something vaguely similar, in a way, sort of.
Laugh the Beloved Country* James Clarke and I planned to collate and edit and write this book in six weeks. It took three years.We blamed the delays on our two computers, sulking on the Highveld and on the tip of Africa, both of them vindictive, dumb machines. They chewed up our texts like dogs in an abbatoir. . . They couldn't even spell abattoir. And now my machine is sulking again. Perhaps, if you're interested in the history of laughter in South Africa, you will have to read it in book form. However, I still hope to file all the texts somewhere in this website - as with other books lying haphazardly around on the hard-drive, CDs, and heaven knows where.
BOOKS ON BIRDS
Have Wings, Will Fly - About southern Africa's people and places as well as birds; from the Namib desert to the Antarctic islands; from San hunters to Zulu schoolteachers and many others pioneering in conservation.
Birders of a Feather - Expert birders, writers and poets tell of their experiences and interests - or lack of interest - in birds and birding.
BOOKS ON SOUTH AFRICA
Hunting for the Rainbow - A novel-history - or non-fictional novel of the 50 years (1870-1920) in which opposing forces conceived and finally established a South African nation. The facts are viewed through fictional participants in the heavily disputed nation-building process - so that Malay fishermen, San hunters, boer farmers, black mineworkers and white women without votes may also have their say, along with Rhodes, Merriman, Jabavu, Smuts, Gandhi, Botha, Soga, Hofmeyr and the rest. The rainbow could have been twice as big and twice as bright.
[Manuscript requires some rewriting and heavy cutting to render it marketable]
BOOKS IN PROGRESS
Ten Tightropes - the stories of ten newspaper editors around the world, fighting off challenges to independent and honest journalism. Most of the material for this work was gathered during a sabbatical in 1986 and during visits to international media congresses and wellknown newspapers. Several chapters are already written. . . but can I find them? Can I find all my computer files of the unwritten ones? Do I want to? Would anyone want to?
Anybody know how to convert a Wordperfect floppy disk? (But first, I have to find a 20-year-old computer - and then trace the missing floppies!)
Around the World on the Tip of your Tongue - a young couple from disbanded 'white Rhodesia', go in search of the rest of the world's English-speaking societies - brown, black, white and yellow; from Asia to Africa; from the Outback to Manhattan
The fiction is about assassins on the trail of the travelling couple. The facts are about the spread of the English language over the past 500 years.
From Gutenberg to Gates - Tracing the rise and fall of newspapers and the revolutions in communication and journalism. This one is the most unlikely of all to see the light of tomorrow. . . the scene is changing at such explosive speed as I write in 2007 that the task of recording its progress is too much for people my age, now living mainly in the past. (I'm told that forecasting the future at this explosive moment in the history of writing is impossible. Anything can happen to the written word, and to all forms of communication, within the next ten years)
* Books asterisked were compiled, edited or brainstormed with James Clarke - who always does most of the work, fortunately for me and for readers.
** Joanne Richards, co-author. Manuscript commissioned and paid for by Gallo Africa. Unpublished because of disagreements over content, but copyright, and right to publish, remain with authors.
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