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House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe |
Robert Mugabe was seen as a liberation hero by the indigenous people of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and received an Honorary Knighthood from the Queen. However he turned one of the most prosperous countries in Africa into a wasteland. The history is interspersed with interviews between a white farmer and the family's black maid who later joined the war veterans in seizing his property. It crosses the bounds between history, biography and autobiography and is a fascinating study of the inner growth through conflict of the farmer and the maid.
(Lynda Johnson - bwl 99 Winter 2021) |
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Our Bodies Their Battlefield: What War does to Women |
A powerful book regarding the use of mass rape as a weapon of War and of Ethnic Cleansing. Christina Lamb has covered many wars and interviewed women, children and some men - all victims. It is clear that the perpetrators are encouraged by those in power. Despite Legislation making rape a War Crime the International Criminal Court has failed to make even one conviction. I would urge people to read and share this book and to write to their MPs and anyone else of influence.
(Lynda Johnson - bwl 100 Spring 2021) |
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The Africa House |
In the 1920s Stewart Gore-Brown built a feudal paradise in a remote corner of Northern Rhodesia complete with uniformed servants and port after dinner. He loved and idealised three women: Edith, his Aunt, twenty years older, Lorna who he wanted to marry and her daughter, also called Lorna, who became his wife. Champion of black Rhodesians, friend of Welensky and Kaunda, he played an influential role in the country's politics. This is his extraordinary story.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 13 April 2002) |
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The Africa House: The True Story of an English Gentleman and His African Dream |
Based on his copious correspondence Lamb recounts Stewart Gore-Browne's struggle to create an ideal English estate in the wilds of Northern Rhodesia: brick cottages for workers, forty-room mansion for himself, family portraits, liveried servants, dressing for dinner and all. Outrageous Edwardian folie de grandeur? Yes, but add his sad, self-deceiving relationship with his aunt and wife and his heroic commitment to black political empowerment and a more complex figure emerges. A truly extraordinary story.
(Annabel Bedini - bwl 39 April 2007) |
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