Jonathan Ball, the founder of Jonathan Ball Publishers, died on 3 April 2021 after a short illness. This collection of essays, commissioned in tribute to him, is edited by Michele Magwood.

Jonathan Ball left a deep impression on many different people in different ways. The forty or so essays reflect the many facets of Jonathan. The chapter headings would read husband, father, businessman, friend, brother, colleague. But it is in the subheads that we begin to understand the shape of him: publisher extraordinaire, history expert, gourmand, liberal thinker, suitor, philosemite and so on.

It cannot be exaggerated how deep an imprint Jonathan has left on the political and cultural life of South Africa, too. The shelves of Jonathan Ball Publishers are weighted with serious history and biographies of eminent figures, with books that other publishers didn’t have the boldness, the sheer guts, to take on. But there are many smaller, more finespun stories that tell us too who we are as a people and as a nation.

In 2011 a property in the Midlands in South Africa that contained a rundown motel went on sale. Rumours were that it would become a truck stop and would start renting out rooms by the hour. That was until entrepreneur Iain Buchan, who owned the neighbouring farm, and his wife, Carol, stepped in.

The Buchans created a wedding venue by building a small dam with a rustic chapel on its banks, but the couple yearned for more. They had been dazzled by the grand gardens they had seen on their travels and decided to transform the green grasslands into something spectacular. Landscaper Tim Steyn was asked to draw up plans and they were about to break ground when the pandemic broke out. A man of endless action, Iain pressed on and persuaded the staff of the wedding venue to help. Waiters began swinging picks, housekeepers dug beds and one chef became a master of irrigation.

Four years on an audacious, magical garden has been rendered from the fertile Midlands soil. Iain Buchan thinks nothing of gouging grottoes and running brooks out of the hillside or moving trees around like a giant in a Grimm’s fairy tale. Today Brahman Hills boasts a moat, a grotto, a magnificent sculpture garden, water features, paths and 16 beehives that are works of art.

The gardens at Brahman Hills are so spectacular they caught the attention of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) in the United Kingdom, which selected it as a Partner Garden in 2023. It then went on to win the RHS Regional Winner award for that year.