Says Humphrey Hawksley: “I first met the Chinese writer Hong Ying many years ago in a fashionable bookstore in London’s upmarket Chelsea district. She was surrounded by literary stars and critics, looking a little tense, yet somehow pensive, elegant, patient. A blend of curiosity and bewilderment creased her face while, just beneath, there was an […]

The following photos of Bushmen rock art were taken in the Erongo Living Museum and Erongo Game Park, Namibia, on 4th and 5th August 2019, the ‘White Lady’ cave at the Bamberg National Park, Namibia, on 6th August 2019, and in the Giants Castle, Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa, on another visit in 2017. For an […]

During our two weeks on the road my guide, Gary Trower and I participated in several types of dance, all with slightly different characteristics. In the Erongo Living Museum in Namibia where Bushmen undress to showcase their handicrafts, dancing and hunting traditions, Gary and I were privileged to join the troupe and their families after […]

During the first two weeks of August, I drove 5,300 kilometers through three countries – South Africa, Namibia and Botswana – mostly within the Kalahari Desert, staying in Bushmen villages and visiting ancient Bushman rock art, meeting shamans and hunters, and witnessing and participating in several Bushmen traditional dances, particularly trance dances, where the shaman […]

When, back in 1962, aged nine, I was sent off to boarding school in England, my grandmother gave me a book called “Warrior Scarlet” by an author called Rosemary Sutcliff. It was an adventure story about a boy with a crippled arm growing up in Bronze Age Britain, overcoming his disability and hardships and becoming […]

Over the last few years I have fallen into the habit of making a pilgrimage each autumn. These have included traditional pilgrim paths such as the 1000-year-old Roman Catholic Camino to Santiago di Compostela in Spain and the even older Shinto Kumano-Kodo in Japan. Last year I went further back in time to follow an […]

From the Collection of Mike and Peter Newmarch, Greytown, Kwa Zulu, South Africa 1) Letter from William John Sawdon Newmarch to his father January 11th 1879 Fort Pearson January 11th 1879 My Dear Father, We got down from Grott? spruitii and we will cross over into the Zulu country in a day or two. The […]

I have written before how I had discovered that my great grandfather, Leonard Newmarch, a young engineer from Yorkshire, had in 1893 been sent to South Africa to build a railway, and in the town of Cradock amid the Karoo Mountains in the Eastern Cape, met his wife to be, Sadie Biddulph, a descendant of […]

I have also mentioned on my blog my joy and surprise when I was contacted one day by a long lost cousin, Michael Newmarch, who told me that he was descended from a great, great, great uncle of mine who had settled in Natal near the border of Zululand in 1849. It was one of […]