South Africa
Death and dishonour: The Promise, by Damon Galgut, reviewed
If death is not an event in life, as Wittgenstein observed, it’s a curious way to structure a novel. But…
What's behind the South African riots?
South Africa is ablaze once more. In the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal (formerly Natal) and Gauteng (which includes Johannesburg and Pretoria),…
Memories of Stellenbosch and South Africa’s finest wines
Lockdown provides time to think, and to reminisce. A South African friend, trapped in Amsterdam, phoned the other day. Had…
Prue Leith: My carbon footprint should put me in jail
I made the mistake of saying I thought insects might help feed the world. They are high-protein, cheap to farm…
Death in the Cape – the lonely fate of Mary Kingsley
What compelled three well-known British writers to leave their homes and travel 6,000 miles to participate in a nasty late-19th-century…
A terrific two-hander that belongs at the National: RSC's Kunene and the King reviewed
The Gift is three plays in one. It opens in a blindingly white Victorian parlour where a posh lady, Sarah,…
The long death of South Africa’s political centre
Cape Town Last Sunday, when South Africa beat Wales to go through to the rugby World Cup final against England,…
Claret, dogs and nothing to grouse about
What do you get if you cross a dyslexic, an insomniac and an agnostic? Someone who wakes up at 4…
Savagery in the Cape Colony: Red Dog, by Willem Anker, reviewed
Red Dog is an ambitious hybrid of a book. It was published in South Africa to wide acclaim in 2014…
Brutish Brits: You Will Be Safe Here, by Damian Barr, reviewed
Damian Barr explains the upsetting genesis of his impressive debut novel, You Will Be Safe Here, in his acknowledgements: This…
Snatching victory from the jaws of defeat: the triumph of Rorke’s Drift
On 22 January last year, the entrance whiteboard at London Underground’s Dollis Hill carried a brief factual statement: On this…
Taki: Should I just move to a cave in France?
Gstaad Do any of you know what cisgender is? I just found out. Cisgender is a term that describes…
Durban Notebook: a nation in paralysis
No one likes uncertainty and in Britain we’ve got more than our fair share. But spare a thought for South…
My faux pas at the Duke of Beaufort’s bash
A letter from a reader in South Africa mentions that the writer’s father insisted a white dinner jacket was permissible…
My fans say I could have won the Nobel – if it wasn’t for the bizarre sex
The family ranch, which my father acquired when I was about six years of age, lay along the banks of…
Farming is a hard life no matter where you do it
Laikipia, Kenya Erupe is a Kenyan farmer. He owns a smallholding of a few acres not far from my own…
Genocide in South Africa: now that’s a black-and-white issue
Last time I was in South Africa I spent two weeks deep in the Karoo, that desiccated wasteland in the…
In Woolf’s clothing
Martin Amis once said that the writer’s life is half ambition and half anxiety. While one part of your brain…
South Africa’s Heart of Darkness
Trencherman was first published in Afrikaans in 2006 and translated into English for a South African readership shortly afterwards, but…
A glimpse of an older, kinder Chelsea
The Parish Church of St Luke in Sydney Street, Chelsea, is enormous. Vaguely reminiscent of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, it…
South Africa’s rainbow nation promise lives on — in rich, caged enclaves
I went back to see my old house in Cape Town last week, and they’d put a cage around it.…
There may never be a better (or cheaper) time to visit South Africa
There are plenty of places to fly to for winter sun, but only one place that offers five-star hotels for…
Every Test match should have a Ben Stokes (or even a Chris Gayle)
On Sunday morning a friend texted: ‘You watching the big bash, or the domestic stuff down in Australia?’ On one…
Fear, loneliness and nostalgia: a return to Johannesburg
Oddly enough, the cabin service people on the plane are constantly eating during the night, helping themselves to the first-class…
An innocent abroad defies South Africa’s insane colour code
At the eye of apartheid South Africa’s storm of insanities was a mania for categorisation. Everything belonged in its place,…
