The intimate and personal story behind the man who tried to kill Verwoerd but didn’t succeed.

“The raucous wail of sirens pierced the quiet Saturday afternoon, making me drop my book and rush outside to see what drama was taking place. A fleet of cars, their sirens screaming, roared along Oxford Road two hundred yards from our house. I stood on the lawn wondering what on earth it was because sirens were rarely heard near our home. I went back inside; the commotion was over. But within half an hour our telephone started ringing non-stop . . .”

9 April 1960 was the day that changed Susie Cazenove’s life – the day her father, David Pratt, shot the Prime Minister of South Africa, Dr Hendrik Verwoerd. Verwoerd, commonly known as the architect of apartheid, didn’t die, but Pratt’s family lived with the legacy of his action.

A chance encounter with the late David Rattray of Fugitive’s Drift led Cazenove to revisit the memories of that terrible day. With Rattray’s encouragement she put pen to paper to describe the extraordinary events of that day and its consequences. Part family memoir, part ode to the settlement of Johannesburg, Cazenove skilfully weaves her family history and the mood in South Africa in the 1950s and 60s as a background to what may have led her father, a farmer and gentle man, to commit a treasonous act.

Twenty-four safari guides are profiled by experienced safari travel promoter, Susie Cazenove. She tells us their stories of adventure and dreams – of following their passion into the wild and of making their guests see Africa in a new light. Read of the antics of the guides in the early days of Londolozi, of guests having to cling to trees in the face of charging rhinos, of safaris with Mary Leaky and legends of the Masai warriors. The tales tell of a wilderness under increasing threat and these guides' determination to share the privilege of a truly wild experience with their guests. The stories take the reader from South Africa to Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya and Namibia in search of legendary safari guides.