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FMCG News South Africa

South African book gets wider publication

A book about the early lives of Nigel and Corona Thornycroft, Nigel & Corona - a Family Story of Adventure, Sport, Wilderness & War from England to Africa, which was published in limited quantities as a family record, sparked requests from around the world, particularly from ex-Zimbabweans.

Paul Morgan, owner and publisher of Coch-y-Bonddu Books, a specialised field-sports publishing company based in Wales, offered to reprint the book in paperback and in much bigger quantities making it available to South Africans in selected bookshops.

The book moves from 'civilised' early 20th century England, with weekend visits from King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, to the trials and triumphs of pioneering a tobacco, game and cattle farm in rural Rhodesia. The family raised five sons, living, along with their ancestral oil paintings, for the first years in a mud and daub hut, because a so-called investor had embezzled every penny of their inheritance.

A life no less ordinary

Also available for the first time in paperback, is Fowler's Moon, a novel written using an illegal pencil and scraps of toilet paper and smuggled out by Nigel, while in a Gestapo POW camp. 'The book has been published twice in the UK since 1955 and established Nigel as an icon of English coastal wildfowlers.

Corona's life was no less ordinary and quite unusual for a woman of her day. As a mother, wife, archaeologist and artist in Africa she made her mark in a number of ways. Her archaeological discovery of a carbon-dated 1450 AD gold burial in the Wedza mountains (the earliest to date in Zimbabwe), is on display in the Harare National Museum, as well as pottery 1260-1280 AD, identified by David Coulson, world-renowned rock art expert, now based in Kenya.

The books can be bought separately or as a hardcover set or leather bound set for collectors. Books are available from Coch-y-Bonddu Books at www.anglebooks.com.

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