Wilbur Smith

Smith attended boarding school at Cordwalles Preparatory School in Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal).[8] While in Natal, he continued to be an avid reader and had the good fortune to have an English master who made him his protégé and would discuss the books Smith had read that week. Unlike Smith's father and many others, the English master made it clear to Smith that being a bookworm was praiseworthy, rather than something to be ashamed of, and let Smith know that his writings showed great promise. He tutored Smith on how to achieve dramatic effects, to develop characters, and to keep a story moving forward.

For high school Smith attended Michaelhouse, a boarding school situated in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.[9] He felt that he never "fitted in" with the people, goals and interests of the other students at Michaelhouse, but he did start a school newspaper for which he wrote the entire content, except for the sports pages. His weekly satirical column became mildly famous and was circulated as far afield as The Wykeham Collegiate and St Anne's.[10]

Smith wanted to become a journalist, writing about social conditions in South Africa, but his father's advice to "get a real job" prompted him to become a tax accountant (chartered accountant).[11]

"My father was a colonialist and I followed what he said until I was in my 20s and learned to think for myself", he said. "I didn't want to perpetuate injustices so I left Rhodesia in the time of Ian Smith."[12]

He attended Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape, South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce in 1954. During the university holidays he worked in the gold mines and over the 1953–54 break with his friend Hillary Currey on a fishing boat based out of Walvis Bay and whalers.[2] The next year believing he was tough enough after having worked on a fishing boat he took a Christmas vacation job on a whaling factory ship. He lasted four weeks.[2] Following graduation, he joined the Goodyear Tires and Rubber Co in Port Elizabeth, where he worked until 1958. After selling their ranch his parents had retired to Kloof near Durban in South Africa. Unfortunately some bad investments forced Smith’s father to return to work. In partnership with his son he established in Salisbury the sheet metal manufacturing business of H. J. Smith and Son Ltd.[2][13] However the business ran into financial difficulties forcing Smith, who was by now 25 and divorced to take a job in 1963 as a tax assessor at the Inland Revenue Service in Salisbury.[2][14]

With spare time in the evening and access to plenty of pens and paper through his job at the Inland Revenue Service, Smith turned back to his love of writing.[2] In April, 1963 he sold his first story, "On Flinder’s Face", under the pen name Steven Lawrence to Argosy magazine for £70, twice his monthly salary.[15] After a number of further acceptances, he wrote his first novel, The Gods First Make Mad,[16] but received 20 rejections. Reviewing what he had written, Smith could see that he had a novel of 180,000 words: it was too long, badly written, had too many characters, and tried to express opinions on everything from politics and racial tension to women.[2] Dejected he returned to work as an accountant.

When he was 27 years old he received a telegram from his agent in London, Ursula Winant enquiring as to progress on his new novel.[2] Encouraged by her expectation that he would be writing another novel, the urge to write once again overwhelmed him. He commenced work his next novel:

I wrote about my own father and my darling mother. I wove into the story chunks of early African history. I wrote about black people and white. I wrote about hunting and gold mining and carousing and women. I wrote about love and loving and hating. In short I wrote about all the things I knew well and loved better. I left out all the immature philosophies and radical politics and rebellious posturing that had been the backbone of the first novel. I even came up with a catching title, When the Lion Feeds.[17]

When the Lion Feeds tells the stories of two young men, twins Sean and Garrick Courtney. The characters' surname was a tribute to Smith's grandfather, Courtney Smith, who had been a transport rider during the Witwatersrand gold rush in the late 1880s, had commanded a Maxim gun team during the Zulu Wars. He had also hunted elephant both as sport and to provide meat for his family.[2] Courtney Smith had a magnificent moustache and could tell wonderful stories that had helped inspire his grandson.

After reading the manuscript Smith's agent rang Charles Pick, the deputy managing director of William Heinemann and convinced him to look at the novel. She also asked for an advance of £500, a guaranteed initial print run of 5,000 copies, and that it be published before Christmas. Impressed after just the first chapter, over the weekend Pick gave it to the company’s sales director Tim Manderson, who agreed that it should be published. Pick rang Winant and offered an advance of £1,000, with an initial print run of 10,000 copies.[2] By the publication date Heinemanns had increased the print run to 20,000.

The book went on to sell well around the world (except in South Africa, where it was banned). Charles Pick later became Smith's mentor and agent.[18][19]

In 2012, Smith said When the Lion Feeds remained his favourite because it was his first to be published.[20] Film rights were bought by Stanley Baker but no movie resulted. However, the money enabled Smith to quit his job in the South African taxation office, calculating he had enough to not have to work for two years.[17]

I hired a caravan, parked it in the mountains, and wrote the second book", he said. "I knew it was sort of a watershed. I was 30 years of age, single again, and I could take the chance."[21]

Smith's second published novel was The Dark of the Sun (1965), a tale about mercenaries during the Congo Crisis. Film rights were sold to George Englund and MGM and it was filmed in 1968 starring Rod Taylor.[22]

Smith did not originally envision the Courtney family from When the Lion Feeds would become a series, but he returned to them for The Sound of Thunder (1966), taking the lead characters up to after the Second Boer War.[23] At the time he was writing The Sound of Thunder in a caravan in the Inyanga mountains in November 1965 Ian Smith unilaterally declared Rhodesian independence. The resulting political violence forced Smith to return to the relative safety of Salisbury where he continued working on the novel during the day, while serving at night as a member of the reserve of the Rhodesian Police.[2] "I would get called out and have to get bodies of children from pit lavatories after they had been killed with pangas (machetes)", he recalled.[12] As Smith didn’t share Ian Smith's views he moved with his now pregnant second wife to Onrus River near Hermanus in South Africa.[2]

Shout at the Devil (1968) was a World War I adventure tale which would be filmed in 1976. It was followed by Gold Mine (1970), an adventure tale about the gold mining industry set in contemporary South Africa, based on a real-life flooding of a gold mine near Johannesburg in 1968.[24]

The Diamond Hunters (1971) was set in contemporary West Africa, later filmed as The Kingfisher Caper (1975). Around this time, Smith also wrote an original screenplay, The Last Lion (1971) which was filmed in South Africa with Jack Hawkins; it was not a success.

Smith admits to being tempted by movie money at this stage of his career but deliberately wrote something that was a complete change of pace, The Sunbird (1972).[25]

It was a very important book for me in my development as a writer because at that stage I was starting to become enchanted by the lure of Hollywood. There had been some movies made of my books and I thought "whoa, what a way to go… All that money!" and I thought "hold on—am I a scriptwriter or am I a real writer?" Writing a book that could never be filmed was my declaration of independence. I made it so diffuse, with different ages and brought characters back as different entities. It was a complex book, it gave me a great deal of pleasure but that was the inspiration—to break free.[26]

Eagle in the Sky (1974) was more typical fare, as was The Eye of the Tiger (1975). Film rights for both were bought by Michael Klinger who was unable to turn them into movies; however, Klinger did produce films of Gold (1974) and Shout at the Devil (1976).

Cry Wolf (1976) was a return to historical novels, set during the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. He then returned to the Courtney family of his first novel with A Sparrow Falls (1977), set during and after World War I. Hungry as the Sea (1978) and Wild Justice (1979) were contemporary stories—the latter was his first best seller in the USA.[27][28]

He embarked on a new series of historical novels, centering around the fictitious Ballantyne family, who helped colonise Rhodesia: A Falcon Flies (1980), Men of Men (1981), The Angels Weep (1982) and The Leopard Hunts in Darkness (1984). The Burning Shore (1985) saw him return to the Courtney family, from World War I onwards. He called this a "breakthrough" book for him "because the female lead kicked the arse of all the males in the book."[29]

In 1985, following publication of The Burning Shore, Charles Pick retired from Heinemann. As Smith did not want to lose Pick’s input and needed someone to oversee his contract and develop his readership, he asked Pick to become his literary agent. Pick agreed, setting up in business as Charles Pick Consultancy. Pick secured a better contract for Smith, which involved Smith moving to Pan Macmillan, who had previously only been his paperback publisher.[2]

Smith stayed with the Courtney family for Power of the Sword (1986) (up to World War II), Rage (1987) (the post-war period up until the Sharpeville massacre), A Time to Die (1989) (the war in Mozambique) and Golden Fox (1990) (the Angola War).

Elephant Song (1991) was a more contemporary tale, but then he kicked off a new cycle of novels set in Ancient Egypt: River God (1993) and The Seventh Scroll (1995). He returned to the Courtneys for Birds of Prey (1997) and Monsoon (1999), then published another Ancient Egyptian story, Warlock (2001).

Blue Horizon (2003) was a historical Courtney tale and The Triumph of the Sun (2005) had the Courtneys meet the Ballantynes. The Quest (2007) was in Ancient Egypt then Assegai (2009) had the Courtneys. Those in Peril (2011) was contemporary, as was Vicious Circle (2013). Desert God (2014) brought Smith back to Ancient Egypt.

In December 2012, Smith left Pan Macmillan, moving to HarperCollins. As part of his new six book deal, Smith wrote select novels with co-writers (listed below), in addition to writing books on his own. In a press release Smith said: "For the past few years my fans have made it very clear that they would like to read my novels and revisit my family of characters faster than I can write them. For them, I am willing to make a change to my working methods so the stories in my head can reach the page more frequently."[30]

The first of the co-written novels was Golden Lion (2015), a Courtney novel. Predator (2016) was contemporary. Pharaoh (2016) brought him back to Ancient Egypt.[31] In 2021 Picadilly Press published two books for young readers by Wilbur Smith, co-written with Chris Wakling – Cloudburst[32] and Thunderbolt.[33]

In 2017 Smith moved again, this time joining Bonnier Zaffre, which gave them language rights to eight new books, together with the English language rights to 34 of Smith’s backlist titles.[34] His new publisher announced at the time of the signing that they would continue the existing release schedule, instigated by HarperCollins, of two titles per year with a number of co-authors, including Corban Addison, David Churchill, Tom Harper and Imogen Robertson.

In 2018 he published his autobiography On Leopard Rock.[2]

The Courtney series is divided into three parts, each of which follows a particular era of the Courtney family.

In chronological order, the parts are Third Sequence, First Sequence, then Second Sequence. However, this is a slight generalization, so in fact the book sequence is as follows, with publication dates in parentheses:[50]

1. Birds of Prey 1660s (1997) (Birds of Prey series)
2. Golden Lion 1670s (2015) (with Giles Kristian)
3. Monsoon 1690s (1999) (Birds of Prey series)
4. The Tiger's Prey 1700s (2017) (with Tom Harper)
5. Blue Horizon 1730s (2003) (Birds of Prey series)
6. Ghost Fire 1754 (2019) (with Tom Harper)
7. Storm Tide 1774 (2022) (with Tom Harper)
8. When the Lion Feeds 1860s–1890s (1964) (When the Lion Feeds Series)
9. The Triumph of the Sun 1880s (2005) (Courtney and Ballantyne)
10. King of Kings 1887 (2019) (with Imogen Robertson) (Courtney and Ballantyne)
11. The Sound of Thunder 1899–1906 (1966) (When the Lion Feeds Series)
12. Assegai 1906–1918 (2009) (Assegai series)
13. The Burning Shore 1917–1920 (1985) (The Burning Shore Series)
14. War Cry 1918–1939 (2017) (with David Churchill) (Assegai series)
15. A Sparrow Falls 1918–1925 (1977) (When the Lion Feeds Series)
16. Power of the Sword 1931–1948 (1986) (The Burning Shore series)
17. Courtney's War 1939 (2018) (with David Churchill) (Assegai series)
18. Rage 1950s and 1960s (1987) (The Burning Shore series)
19. Legacy of War After WWII (2021) (with David Churchill) (Assegai series)
20. Golden Fox 1969–1979 (1990) (The Burning Shore series)
21. A Time to Die 1987 (1989) (The Burning Shore series)

The Ballantyne Novels chronicle the lives of the Ballantyne family, from the 1860s through the 1980s, against a background of the history of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The fifth novel seeks to combine the Ballantyne narrative with that of Smith's other family saga, The Courtney Novels.

The books are set in the following time periods:

1. A Falcon Flies 1860 (1980)
2. Men of Men 1870s–1890s (1981)
3. The Angels Weep 1st part 1890s, 2nd part 1977 (1982)
4. The Leopard Hunts in Darkness 1980s (1984)
5. The Triumph of the Sun 1884 (2005)
6. King of Kings 1887 (2019) (with Imogen Robertson)
7. Call of the Raven Early 1800s (2020) (with Corban Addison)

The Ancient Egypt series is an historical fiction series based in large part on Pharaoh Memnon's time, addressing both his story and that of his mother Lostris through the eyes of his mother's slave Taita, and mixing in elements of the Hyksos' domination and eventual overthrow.

1. River God (1993)[51]
2. The Seventh Scroll (1995)*
3. Warlock (2001)
4. The Quest (2007)
5. Desert God (2014)[52]
6. Pharaoh (2016)
7. The New Kingdom (2021) (with Mark Chadbourn)
8. Titans of War (2022) (with Mark Chadbourn)
9. Testament (2023) (with Mark Chadbourn) Scheduled release date October 24, 2023 [53]

* The Seventh Scroll is set in modern times but reflects the other books in the series via archaeological discoveries.[54]