Short Stories / Anicdotes relating to African Hunting Safaris/As a small boy growing up in Kenya, I would listen to the stories my mother told me with avid interest. I would hang on to her every word and vowed that one day I was going to be a hunter too. Many of my parent's safari boys were my friends and would scare the daylights out of me by telling me hair-raising stories of their own. Each chapter of this book is a complete story in itself. The book is designed to make light and amusing reading.

Born in Africa, Anglo-Irish by descent, Diana, aged two, travelled from Johannesburg to Ireland, to Annes Grove, a stately Georgian home with world-famous gardens, with talk of horses, rare plants and fishing juxtaposed with tales of banshees, the little people, ráths, the foxy-haired ghost and visits from Elizabeth Bowen, Vita Sackville-West, David Cecil and many others. Aged 18, Diana returned to Africa, where she doubled for Grace Kelly in 'Mogambo', met Raymond Hook, the king of cheetah racing, befriended the legendary Ewart Grogran and unwittingly employed a Mau Mau leader. Ever one to stand up for what is right, she challenged the authorities at the height of apartheid – and won! With humour, eloquence, empathy and candour, Diana shares her return to a place from her childhood, where family truths are learned, along with the realisation that Africa has real magic all of its own. p, li { white-space: pre-wrap; }

From the horrific to the humorous, the adventures - and misadventures - of journalists assigned to Africa have produced a wealth of yarns, anecdotes and legends. These are the stories behind the headlines, retold and relayed time and time again wherever correspondents gather to relax, but rarely finding their way into print. set forth to illuminate for their readers the mysteries of a dark continent emerging into the dubious daylight of indeterminate independence and polyglot manhood. the bloody chaos of the Congo and the agony of Nigeria's civil war, inside the death camps of Idi Amin's Uganda, under the lash of Hastings Banda's fly whisk in Malawi to the frontiers of white hegemony in Rhodesia, the hacks of Africa hardened into an elite as eccentric as the beat they had been sent to cover. Most survived; some were killed or wounded in action, and this book is dedicated to their memory. post-colonial trauma and turbulence. There are heroes and villains, champions and cheats, saints and sinners, all finding themselves thrown together in the most unlikely situations in search of the Africa story.