I have lived a life on the edge of the great chasms of the twentieth century. A child of partition – growing up on North West Frontier, bordering on Afghanistan, as the Great Game played out in my girlhood home and the Nazi threat loomed; a white child in South Africa as it descended down the monstrous road of Apartheid; a young woman caught up in a deadly civil war in the Congo, a cat’s paw of the superpower Cold War conflict.
I write memoir with a difference – the backdrop is the conflict and upheaval you read about in the history books. I give you the mood, the intrigue and the lies adults told each other about a world changing in front of them. I show what it was really like and paint the past in vivid colours.
I am widowed with four children and nine grandchildren.
I have performed, taught drama, broadcast on the radio, and written for most of my adult life. I am widely travelled and give talks on my adventures.
I started my career as an actress – in repertory companies including Newcastle and Richmond in the UK.
When my children were small I got regular commissions to write half hour satirical television plays for children. I scripted a film and wrote two stage plays and published a short story in New Stories 3, an anthology published for the UK Arts Council in 1978 by Hutchinson.
After leaving school, I got a one-way ticket to England from Africa and immediately went to drama classes. At the first lesson the guy teaching said ‘are you going to take this professionally?’ And I said ‘yes’. My parents cut me off without the proverbial penny so I not only had to earn enough to live but to pay my drama school fees. I had to work in an office until ten and eleven at night. Eventually I left after two terms and started applying for jobs. I told the agents I’d been to drama school. My first job was what’s called an assistant stage manager in weekly seaside rep. The agent rang up and said ‘somebody has dropped out at the last minute and if you come in straight away you might get this job.’ So I just put on the lowest dress I had, sailed in, and said ‘you’ve got to employ me.’ I was paid so little - below equity minimum - that I had to sleep in in the bar of a pub after everyone had left at closing time. But at the end of the season I got the part of Gigi, which is a biggie. I was playing opposite the leading man and my father did actually send me £10.
After leaving school, I got a one-way ticket to England from Africa and immediately went to drama classes. At the first lesson the guy teaching said ‘are you going to take this professionally?’ And I said ‘yes’. My parents cut me off without the proverbial penny so I not only had to earn enough to live but to pay my drama school fees. I had to work in an office until ten and eleven at night. Eventually I left after two terms and started applying for jobs. I told the agents I’d been to drama school. My first job was what’s called an assistant stage manager in weekly seaside rep. The agent rang up and said ‘somebody has dropped out at the last minute and if you come in straight away you might get this job.’ So I just put on the lowest dress I had, sailed in, and said ‘you’ve got to employ me.’ I 
