All posts by Christopher Hepworth


  |  Blog  |   

‘In the whole British Empire there is no occupation in which a man may meet his end in so many ways as this one. The coal mine is the scene of a multitude of the most terrifying calamities…’ Friedrich Engels (1844)

My family worked in the Yorkshire coal mines for over a hundred years. Thankfully the long family tradition stretching back at least as far as the 1830’s ended with my father when he resigned from his colliery job in Barnsley as a young man. He was an assistant personnel manager and was therefore classified by the hardy Yorkshire miners as one of the bosses. During his first trip to the coal face, he emerged from the cage that had brought him down the main mine shaft. The miners reversed the ventilation fans as a practical joke causing the stagnant air and coal dust to blow straight into his face. For some reason the joke was lost on my father. He went on to have a stimulating and rewarding life above ground, away from the mines in a job that he loved!

I have nothing but admiration for coal miners past and present. Their labour powered the industrial revolution in Britain from around 1760 and they brought prosperity to the world. Their work was backbreaking, cramped, dangerous and dirty and for over two centuries they earned a pittance. They suffered from black lung (pneumoconiosis), silicosis, dust-related diffuse fibrosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The back-breaking work often left them deformed. It frequently led to alcoholism, family breakdown and even in the twentieth century they would be extremely lucky to see out their sixtieth birthday.

Worst of all were the terrible accidents that too often befell the mine workers. Three incidents going back 150 years happened to members of my family and I relate their stories below.

In 1838, three of my relatives, from branches of my paternal grandmother’s side of the family, died in one of the most notorious mining disasters in British history. They were Elizabeth Carr aged 13, Francis Hoyland (also aged 13) and Samuel Atick (aged 10). They died with 23 other children, the youngest of which was Joseph Burkinshaw aged 7. The extract below comes from the UK Telegraph*.

“IT was a hot, sunny morning when the coal miners arrived at work at the Huskar Pit, Nabs Wood, near the village of Silkstone, South Yorkshire, England. But at 2pm on July 4, 1838, 180 years ago, a thunderstorm pelted the earth with rain and hailstones for two hours.

About 6cm of rain fell in a short time, filling up a stream in a nearby wood that was normally a dry creek bed. The stream, which had never been known to overflow, passed close by a “drift”, a shaft being used for ventilation. As the waters in the stream rose it threatened to inundate the shaft.

The rain had also put out the fire under a boiler for the steam engine powering the winch that pulled coal and workers to the surface. The miners were told to wait until the fire could be relit or to make their own way to the surface.

Most of the older men chose to wait at the bottom of the pit, but a group of about 40 boys and girls, also working in the mine, became impatient and decided to make their own way out via the small ventilation shaft. As they climbed upward, in pitch dark, the stream broke its banks and water poured down their escape route, washing 26 children back to a trap door that was shut, allowing water to build up. They either died from hitting the door or drowned.”

Miners were paid for each tonne of coal that they brought to the surface and children as young as five were employed in the mines to supplement their parent’s paltry wages who could not otherwise make ends meet. Seven-year-old Joseph Burkinshaw would have been a ‘trapper’. His job was to sit alone in the mine tunnels for up to twelve hours in the pitch black next to a ventilation trap door.  When the older boys and girls passed by pulling a seven tonne corve of coal, Joseph’s job was to raise the trap door to let the corve through. **

A child worker harnessed to a corve, c1838

Elizabeth Carr, Francis Hoyland and Samuel Atick would have been ‘hurriers’. These young children were required to drag an empty corve down from the shaft bottom along passageways between 24 to 30 inches high and return with a full load from the coal face. One child would be harnessed to the front of the corve, while another would follow behind, pushing the load with their hands and their heads. Most hurriers would have large septic calluses on their legs, hands and knees and many were bald as a result of pushing corves up steep inclines with their heads. Their bodies were often ‘old’ and broken before they reached adulthood.

Elizabeth, Francis and Samuel, along with the other 23 children did not die in vain. The Huskar Pit disaster so appalled Victorian society that it led to the 1839 Royal Commission of Inquiry into Children’s Employment. The subsequent Mines and Collieries Act, 1842 resulted in a ban on boys younger than 10, and females of any age, working in coal mines and limited the hours of those who did work.

The worst coal mining disaster in England occurred in Barnsley on the 12th December 1866, although to my knowledge none of my relatives were among the victims. 361 miners and rescuers were killed when a series of explosions caused by firedamp ripped through the mine. The whole neighbourhood for three miles around shook as if an earthquake had occurred. The rescue effort took three days and many of the rescuers were killed by subsequent explosions in the mine.

Fourteen years later, on the 15th February 1880 in the village of Silkstone, near Barnsley my grandmother’s grandfather Edward Horne and his two teenage sons Janes and Herbert went to work at the nearby Cross Pit for the afternoon shift. As they were working, the roof collapsed, and they were buried under a mass of stone. It took five hours to pull their dead bodies from under the rubble.

Ten months later, on the 10th December 1880, my great, great grandfather Francis Hepworth aged 42, set off to work at the Hoyland Silkstone Colliery. He made several trips in the cage that took him from the surface to the coal face before he made his last fatal journey at 8:30pm. Half way down the 90-metre shaft, the wire rope attached to the cage snapped and the cage plummeted to the bottom. A new rope was attached to the cage and Francis Hepworth’s dead body was brought back up to the surface and taken to his widow Ann at their home in Barnsley.

As the world shifts away from coal to renewable energy, we must honour the memories of all the men, women and children who toiled in horrendous conditions and sometimes died in the coal mines over the last two centuries. It is not a job we should ever wish on our children, our friends or relatives. Times have changed and safety within the coal mines has improved immeasurably but it remains a dangerous and unpleasant occupation.

To those in society who still believe that a traditional job in the coal mines is preferable to a job in the new sunrise industries, I would say that the ghosts of thousands of miners killed in industrial accidents around the would accuse them of insincerity. It is time to move on and find a brighter, cleaner future for our children and leave the horrors of the past behind. There is no room for misplaced nostalgia when it comes to coal mining.

 * https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/the-huskar-pit-disaster-in-yorkshire-in-1838-spurred-the-government-on-to-do-something-about-child-labour/news-story/39e7c949da3498959f37df34978e8211

**  https://www.stmuhistorymedia.org/child-labor-in-the-coal-mines/


  |  Blog  |   

Never underestimate the power of a good book. It could take you to far away places where you are fighting monsters, Vikings or mafia bosses. You could fall in love with an exotic, beautiful, insanely rich character who loves you back despite your bad habits and expanding midriff. You could travel back in time to ancient Egypt, Tudor England or Nazi Germany and still have time to pop down to the pub with your mates. You could go on a profound philosophical journey or find you have developed the skills of an SAS special forces veteran.

The fact is that books define who we are. Each book we read leaves an impression on our personality and outlook to life. They sow seeds that germinate in our minds and form the foundations from which our lives blossom and flourish.

As such I have listed ten books that I have read on my journey through life and made me who I am. Some of these books may surprise you as few would claim to be masterpieces, but each has had a profound impact on my development as a person.

 

Janet and John: Off to Play.

I don’t believe I actually read this book in the traditional sense. But I had memorised every word of this 1960s classic while I was still in nappies having secretly gate-crashed my elder brother’s reading lessons. My parents never tired of showing off my ‘reading skills’ to astonished guests as a party trick. By the one hundredth show, I could read Janet and John like Laurence Olivier would perform Hamlet at the Theatre Royal. That experience germinated my love of reading that never went away. I would devour books by the truckload for the next fifty years.

 

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

I read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a school assignment. What were they thinking? Kids should not be exposed to Orwell’s nightmare vision at such a tender age. Or perhaps they should, because I was both riveted and deliciously horrified by his bleak vision of a communist totalitarian Britain. I could not put George Orwell’s brilliant novel down and it left me with a lifelong revulsion of political extremism.

 

River God by Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith does not win many awards for literary merit, but he certainly knows how to churn out the ripsnorters. I was hooked on Wilbur Smith at the tender age of fourteen. Wilbur’s heroes are hard drinking, tough, ‘real men’ from the John Wayne mould. He could grab you by the scruff of the neck and hurl you into nineteenth century Africa. So vivid were his scenes that you would believe that a Zulu spear was flying towards you with your name on it. His best book, River God transported me into Ancient Egypt so effectively that I never really emerged. I have had a love affair with all things Egyptian ever since.

 

Three Cheers for Me by Donald Jack

The average life expectancy of a World War One fighter pilot was only six weeks. Yet Canadian author Donald Jack made that terrible historical backdrop ‘laugh out loud’ funny with a series of novels about Airman Bartholomew Bandy. And I really do mean laugh out loud. For weeks I would annoy my fellow London commuters with loud guffaws, snorts and chuckles. It took two weeks for the sequels to arrive from the local bookshop and the feeling of delicious anticipation while I waited impatiently taught me the power that a well written book can have on a receptive reader.

 

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Wasn’t Dickens the crusty Victorian writer that wrote about poverty, pick pockets and social inequality? Yes he was, but he also wrote this exquisitely entrancing story about young Pip and his journey to adulthood and respectability. Dickens’ easy prose flows from the pages like gossamer silk from a goddess and when I had finished, I felt that I had made a new friend. I could imagine myself sitting down with him in a cosy ninteenth century pub chatting about football, London weather, Brexit and Jack the Ripper. Dickens taught me about the timelessness of good writing and the connection we all feel with the characters of a powerful story regardless of era, culture or genre.

 

The Firm by John Grisham

Dammit I want to be just like John Grisham! He emerged from a similar corporate background as me and made lawyers sexy. In doing so, he sold a gazillion books and is now regarded as one of the most successful authors ever. I’m not jealous at all even though the smug grin he wears on his bio picture at the back of his books seems to be saying ‘Hepworth, I outsell you a million to one.’ Jealousy aside, The Firm was a stunning book. It was a genre defining tome and had me gripped from the first paragraph to page 432. Grisham absolutely nailed it with The Firm.

My mission is to outsell Grisham with my Sam Jardine novels. Simples! Sell books, buy yacht, order Rolls Royce and throw wild party.

 

The Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton

I have read The Faraway Tree four times over, once to each of my children. It’s the story of three spolit kids who discover a magical tree that takes them to imaginary lands such as the Land of Take-What-You-Want and the Land of Do-As-You-Please. The book is full of absurd characters including Mr Moon-Face, Dame Washalot and the Saucepan Man. Enid Blyton was obviously on speed, LSD or crack cocaine when she wrote such nonsense. My four children must have been on the same stuff, because they were entranced. Enid’s ability to get inside the heads of children was extraordinary. The magical bond that formed between myself and my kids while I was reading her crazy adventures to them at bedtime was something that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

 

Without Remorse by Tom Clancy

Just occasionally a guy just has to read a piece of trash that pushes all the right toxic masculinity buttons and there is no better example than Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse. It is the male antidote to the fairer sex’s Fifty Shades of Grey. Although Clancy can spend fifty pages describing the inner workings of a nuclear bomb that is seconds away from turning London or New York into radioactive dust, Without Remorse is his finest moment. It is a vengeance novel that describes how the hero tracks down and obliterates the baddies in the most ingenious and gruesome ways. A brilliant read. Now I’ve got that out of my system, where did I put my Tolstoy novel?

 

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

One day, I would like to shake Mr. Cornwell by the hand and thank him for many hours of pleasure his historical novels have given me. His vibrant writing style and colourful characters places his readers right in the front line of the shield wall defending England against the heathen Vikings or the Duke of Wellington’s thin red line against the imperious French. Best of all was The Last Kingdom. His masterpiece made all things Viking fashionable again for the first time since Alfred burnt the cakes in the year 878. Bravo Bernard Cornwell.

 

The Sleepwalker Legacy by Christopher Hepworth

The best book in the world. 😉Enough said. Grab a copy here and wipe the smirk off John Grisham’s face.

 

Honourable mentions

Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis; A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe; The Odessa File by Frederick Forsyth; Past Caring by Robert Goddard; Riotous Assembly by Tom Sharpe; The Alchemist by Peter James; Not Dead Enough by Peter James; The Go-Between by L.P.Hartley; Notes From a Small Island by Bill Bryson; The Last Oracle by Christopher Hepworth!


  |  Office Politics  |   

Will your team sink or swim? White water rafting down the Zambezi River requires great teamwork!.

The Holy Grail of any team is to a achieve a special bond of loyalty and pride among their members such that no task is seen as too daunting and anything seems possible. No leader, despite their individual capabilities can thrive without the contribution of their team. The leader’s task is to encourage a sense of ‘esprit de corps’ so that every member can trust, assist and enjoy the achievements of their colleagues. A happy team will sink or swim together.

The team unit is the building block of society and critical to the success or failure of any enterprise. When a skilled and motivated team is working in harmony, great things can happen. There are many examples of teams that achieved the seemingly impossible in their chosen field and here are three of my personal favourites:

  • The Manchester United team under Alex Ferguson won thirteen league titles, five FA Cups, four league cups, ten charity shields, two UEFA Champions leagues and four other minor European trophies. It is a record that is unlikely to ever be matched by any other English Premier League club.
  • In music, pride of place must go to the Beatles who dominated the charts around world for eight years. They inspired a generation of musicians and fans throughout the world and shaped the future of music for decades to come. Despite their obvious differences in temperament and skills their ‘team’ was the perfect blend of the sum of the parts (including the fifth Beatle George Martin) that made the band such a phenomenal success.
  • The most impressive example of teamwork in the history of mankind must belong to the Apollo moon landings. From the announcement in 1961 it took only eight years to achieve the dream. Behind the scenes a team of 400,000 engineers, scientists, and technicians from more than 20,000 companies and universities made it possible. Even today, people are so amazed at the scale of the achievement that it has spawned a whole industry of conspiracy theorists who believe the event was a Hollywood stunt.

It’s likely that most people will at some stage be faced with the task of building a team during their working careers (whether this be in business, the arts, sport or any other endeavour). I have had the good fortune to have recruited and led several teams in recent years and some had that elusive sense of esprit de corps which made turning up to work an absolute pleasure. Not only did we have incredible fun but we kicked some spectacular goals worthy of David Beckham or Wayne Rooney. Here is my personal formula for creating the ideal team:

  1. It’s not all about you! You may be the boss and you may even be the most experienced player in the team, but if you are a glory seeker, your team will see through your façade in an instant. Unless you have the strategic brilliance of Napoleon, the raw magnetism of Barrack Obama or the terrifying nature of Genghis Khan, you are going to rely on the collective skills and hard work of your entire team to get the job done. I am always suspicious of leaders who become ‘Manager of the Year’ in their industry when the only award that matters is ‘Team of the year’. The strongest, most effective managers I have worked with all acted with humility and grace and were respected all the more for it.

 

  1. Create a desirable team culture. The right team culture will depend on the task at hand. But it is hard to go wrong with a ‘work hard, play hard’ Not everyone is a social butterfly, but teams that enjoy each other’s company outside of work are more likely to gel during work hours. A good manager will create several team building opportunities that everyone can enjoy. These events should have a strong sense of purpose to create a memorable experience for the team.

 

  1. Recruit strong team players. I have hired several ‘superstars’ over the years that have disrupted the team and negatively impacted morale. Some employees are so full of their own self-importance that they are unaware how their behaviour knocks the confidence out of the less assertive but equally capable staff. I would rather hire a younger, less experienced person with the right attitude. To recruit a good team player, ensure you have a strong suite of scenario-based interview questions. For example, ‘how would you handle the following situation…?’.

 

  1. Recruit the right capabilities. The ‘right’ capabilities for any team will depend upon the task at hand. In my profession (procurement management) I look for strong communication skills, problem solving capabilities, high levels of energy / drive, excellent soft skills (good emotional intelligence), commercial acumen and team focus.

 

  1. Set clear objectives. Human nature enjoys a challenge. As long as that challenge is clearly stated, is easily measurable and is within their capability, team members are happy to rise to the occasion. Just make sure that the reward for meeting that stretch target is identified up front and is delivered in full on completion.

 

  1. Nurture your team. Each team member will require different levels of support depending upon their level of experience and personal style. A good boss should provide a working environment where serious mistakes are improbable due to good working processes and a supportive culture from their colleagues and manager. When a mistake is made, a good boss will ‘own it’ and use the experience as a learning opportunity without making a drama of the situation.

 

  1. Be a lifelong mentor. You have given your team the very best of your time and imparted your knowledge. You have sent them to the most appropriate training courses and seen them grow into aspiring managers in their own right. You now have a duty to help your former team member take that next step in their career. With luck it will be a role within your own team or with another department in your organisation. However, they may wish to fly the nest to a completely different company. You must view this departure as a positive reflection of your own strengths as a manager and wish them well. They will always be grateful for the part you played in their success.

 

With your champion team ready to rock and roll, you have all the ingredients to shoot for the moon and kick some goals!

Good luck.


  |  Blog, Interviews & Awards  |   

Last week I received a very exciting email from the Readers’ Favorite® Book Review and Awards Contest website. The Last Oracle has been awarded a silver medal in the Conspiracy Thriller category in their 2018 International Book Awards.

While I had always felt that The Last Oracle was a strong book, my first instinct as an independent author was to wonder if they had mixed me up with a more deserving and famous author! But then I discovered that the Readers Favorite® reviewers and judges are a highly dedicated group of avid readers. They judge many thousands of books every year and take a real pride in their work. They judge a huge range of books from ‘self-published authors to New York Times best-selling authors’.

My second instinct was to check out the other medal winning authors within my genre. The Readers’ Favorite® website claims that it receives submissions from independent authors, small publishers and publishing giants like Harper Collins and Simon & Schuster. Sure enough, one of the authors in my genre had sold over a million copies of her books. It dawned on me that it is a significant honour to be awarded a silver medal by Readers’ Favorite®.

I am someone who has gone through life relatively ‘award free’ despite being a competitive person. I have been skeptical about the value of such awards outside of the sporting and film industry. I do remember receiving the grade three Latin prize as a child but then I had a twenty-five-year drought before I troubled the prize-givers again. More recently I received three significant Procurement industry awards which impressed no-one but gave me the idea of creating a fictional hero ‘Sam Jardine’ and giving him a credible backstory as a supreme negotiator. Like Ian Fleming’s James Bond, Sam’s adventures drew on many real-life corporate villains, professional intrigues and complex moral challenges.

I now understand that literary awards matter a great deal to an aspiring author. We live in an age when there are over ten million books on Amazon and hundreds of books in every literary agent’s slush pile. Sam Jardine has to take his place in a very long queue when it comes to grabbing the attention of the reader and the publishing world. An award such as this gives Sam instant ‘look at me’ appeal and a seal of approval from a reputable and knowledgeable awards website. And after all, isn’t a book is supposed to strut its stuff in the bookstore? A shiny new silver medal can only help in the elaborate courtship ritual between the book and the sophisticated and demanding reader.

Needless to say, I was very flattered by the award and I can only hope that it may be the start of an exciting journey for both Sam Jardine and myself. The bar has been set and Sam now has to shoot for gold in his next adventure.


  |  Blog  |   

In July my wife Anne, my four children and I followed in the footsteps of David Livingstone. It was a journey of four and a half thousand kilometres across Southern Africa in a white minibus. While Livingstone explored sights and civilisations unknown to the western world one hundred and fifty years ago, I was rediscovering my fading childhood memories of Zambia and hoping they would be as wonderous to my children as they were to me forty years before.

Our journey through South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana began at Johannesburg airport where we collected our comfortable eight seat minibus. A 4x4 would have been more appropriate for the bone jarring, potholed roads and the axle deep sand that we sometimes endured, but overall our minibus was a spirited workhorse and perfect for our large family.

Our first stop down memory lane was the awe-inspiring Great Zimbabwe ruins. Built in the fourteenth century by a long forgotten African kingdom, it bears comparison with Ancient Egyptian monuments. The famous author Wilbur Smith in his book Sunbird speculated that it was the last outpost of a doomed Phoenician civilisation. The massive walls and impressive battlements were constructed over several centuries and the stonework is near perfect. I had first visited Great Zimbabwe as an eight-year-old at a time when the country was called Rhodesia. Those memories were still fresh, assisted by the magnificence of the stone structures that have lent their name to the new country of Zimbabwe. The area still retains much of its British colonial splendour and we stayed overnight in the faded glory of a grand home that had been converted to a comfortable B&B.

 

The Great Zimbabwe ruins

 

Two days later we arrived at Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River. Built in the 1960s was once the largest man-made lake in the world. The dam still provides most of the electricity to both Zimbabwe and Zambia. Lake Kariba is surrounded by national parks and is home to exotic wildlife and big game fish including Tiger Fish and Bream. It is an undiscovered paradise and home to a fleet of houseboats beloved by Zimbabweans who while away their political and economic woes on the decks of these comfortable but ungainly craft. We spent three days on one such boat enjoying the life of luxury. The banks of the lake teemed with elephants, hippos and crocodiles and the air was filled with the music of fish eagles.

 

A magnificent ‘tusker’ on the banks of Lake Kariba

 

Too soon our Kariba houseboat experience came to end. We left Zimbabwe behind and drove over the massive dam walls into my childhood home country of Zambia. It was at this point that our tour almost unravelled. The Zambian customs official noticed that our vehicle’s cross border paperwork had not been correctly certified and insisted that we produce the correct paperwork. Three anxious hours later, we were still languishing at the border crossing. But Dr David Livingstone never let a little bureaucracy stand in his way, and neither did the Hepworth family! With a little charm and persuasion, we were eventually waved through on the understanding that the missing paperwork would be emailed through from Johannesburg later that day.

We were back in my childhood home of Zambia and heading to Lusaka. I was hoping to instil my own children with the same sense of wonder that I had felt for this exotic location many years before.  After travelling six days and eighteen hundred kilometres in our white mini-van through South Africa and Zimbabwe, the moment had arrived.

Lusaka has been the capital of Zambia since 1935. When my family moved there shortly after independence in 1971 it was a charming and cosmopolitan pocket-sized city. Its pleasantly warm climate, fertile soil, abundance of water and friendly people made it something of a Garden of Eden for our family. For the next thirty years little changed in Lusaka. Its economy depended entirely upon the price of copper (Zambia’s main export). Basic commodities were frequently in short supply and power cuts were a fact of life. Lusaka became a time capsule and felt like a comfortable pair of old slippers. My parents loved Lusaka enough to spend the rest of their lives there and are buried in a tiny village in the African bush twenty kilometres north of the city.

As we drove into Lusaka, we entered a completely different world. Sure, the potholed roads were a potent reminder of times gone by, but the city had become enormous in the short span of 15 years. It is now the fastest growing city in Southern Africa and has doubled in physical size. International hotels have sprung up like mushrooms and dozens of new shopping malls have flourished, stocked with every commodity known to man. Brand new suburbs have transformed this once sleepy little town. Much of the city centre was familiar, but traffic had become a nightmare. Speed humps blighted the roads and the main roundabouts were at a standstill. Lusaka had traded its comfy old moccasins for the latest designer footwear.

For all that was new, Lusaka still delivered its charm in abundance. We stayed at a stunning lodge on the fringes of the city as the guests of one of my childhood friends. It was an emotional reunion and I will be forever grateful for the kindness and gracious hospitality that she and her family showed us during our brief stay. We also visited a nearby elephant orphanage at Lilayi Lodge where orphaned baby elephants are hand reared till they are old enough to be released back into the wild. And my wife Anne and daughter Sarah took a horseback safari ride in the grounds of Lilayi.

 

Lilayi elephant orphanage, Lusaka

 

The most emotional part of our African journey was the pilgrimage to the graves of my mother and father who died of cancer over fifteen years ago. The grave site was in a tiny Zambian village just outside our old family farm. But first, we called in to visit the farm which had been my childhood home and where my memories of Lusaka are most lucid. The new owners of the farm took us under their wing and gave us a grand tour of the 750-hectare property. Like everything else in Lusaka, it had been extensively modernised and extended. Fortunately, the house itself was exactly as it had been all those years ago. The ghosts of the past swirled through my mind and filled me with strange but comforting emotions. Two hours later we finally visited the tiny village where my parents were buried.

 

My childhood home in Lusaka

 

The eleven-kilometre dirt road to my parent’s farm was always in a shocking, rutted and potholed condition and it seemed as if it had deteriorated further in the preceding fifteen years. Our poor mini-van almost shook itself to bits and refused to start when it was time to set off back to Lusaka. Luckily, we bump started it with the help of the enthusiastic locals and much to our relief, we never had a mechanical problem again for the rest of our trip.

 

Zambian children racing our white minibus

 

Lusaka left me with a string of mixed emotions. The past is indeed a foreign country as L.P. Hartley wrote in his excellent book ‘The Go-Between’. We can never expect things to remain unchanged like a fading black and white photograph and much has improved for the wonderful people of Zambia. Luckily, I had one more important reason to be visiting Zambia and that was to reacquaint myself with the wildlife of the Luangwa Valley and to check on the conservation efforts that protect the its magnificent elephants.

Our flight to Luangwa was an unexpected adventure in a twelve seat Cessna. We tree hopped the five hundred kilometres to Luangwa’s tiny airport giving us a panoramic view of the Zambian bush. The summer rains had been late but fierce, leaving the countryside lush and green despite the onset of the dry season.

I have often mentioned that the Luangwa Valley is my favourite spot on earth and a world-renowned wildlife haven. Concentrations of game along the gently meandering Luangwa River and its lagoons are among the most intense in Africa. It is famous for its walking safaris, the large number of leopards and the breathtakingly beautiful Thornicroft Giraffe which exists nowhere else in the world. And yet despite this incredible natural trove of natural riches it also remains unspoilt by the impact of tourism.

I had heard that the elephant population in Zambia had been massively impacted by poachers supplying the insatiable Chinese market for ivory. I wanted to see the effect of poaching on the ground for myself and talk to experts who were in the front-line against the ivory trade. I also wanted my children to experience the feeling of awe one gets from being in the presence of these majestic beasts in their natural habitat. But I need not have worried. South Luangwa is the jewel in the Zambian wildlife crown and a source of national pride. While other parks in the more remote regions of Zambia have indeed suffered catastrophic losses of elephants, Luangwa’s population has stabilised around 20,000. It is still a considerable drop since my first visit there in 1971 but elephant numbers are sustainable and in perfect balance with the natural environment. Indeed, all the birds and animals of Luangwa looked plump and in the peak of condition during our visit. The late rains had been plentiful, and Luangwa was thriving.

We settled into our beautiful chalets at ‘Thornicroft Lodge’ in Mfuwe, a short drive from the tiny airport. We were greeted by the resident troop of vervet monkeys, baboons and dainty impalas. More threatening were the hordes of crocodiles and noisy hippos that lined the banks of the Luangwa. For the next three days we were in wildlife heaven. On our morning and evening safaris we spotted every major animal that Luangwa has to offer except the rhino. (The Black Rhino was declared extinct in Zambia in 1998 thanks to rampant poaching. However, a small population has been re-introduced into a secret and heavily protected location in North Luangwa.*) There was an abundance of elephants and their calves and I was able to rediscover the magical connection one gets when viewing these magnificent creatures in the wild.

 

Luangwa’s big cats

 

The huge numbers and sheer variety of wildlife was a delight to the senses and Luangwa certainly enchanted my children in the same way it had captivated me many years before.

Too soon we were back in Lusaka and making our way to Livingstone and the Victoria Falls.  Once again, the road deteriorated to the point that I feared for the mechanical integrity of our trusty white minibus, but we safely navigated what must be the worst 50km stretch of ‘A1’ anywhere in the world.

David Livingstone wrote of the Falls “…but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.” It is a massive curtain of water 1,700 metres wide and 110 meters deep. The locals describe it as the ‘smoke that thunders’ and it is classified as the largest waterfall in the world. It is possible to feel the raw power of the Victoria Falls as you gaze upon the mightiest of the seven wonders of the world.

 

The Victoria Falls Bridge from the air

 

Our first sighting of the Falls was during the third border crossing of our trip from Zambia back into Zimbabwe. It is without doubt the most spectacular border crossing in the world. One must drive (or walk) across a single span arched bridge built in 1904 at the request of Cecil Rhodes. It spans the second gorge 130 metres above the raging, frothing body of water known as the ‘boiling pot’ and the glimpse of the Main Falls as you drive past takes your breath away.

We stayed at the beautiful Lokathula lodge on the Zimbabwe side of the Falls and immersed ourselves into the multitude of activities that is all part of the Victoria Falls experience. We tried our hand at white water rafting and witnessed our ‘sister’ raft flip over at the rapid affectionately known as ‘Oblivion’ spilling its unfortunate passengers into the hippo infested Zambezi River. We took a fifteen-minute helicopter ride over the Falls and my son Patrick bungee jumped over the Victoria Falls Bridge.

In Zimbabwe, we acquired the ‘must have’ billion dollar note souvenirs that are a legacy of the hyperinflation that was rampant in the country until 2008. These notes have now been replaced by the more stable US dollar but due to economic restrictions, US dollars are almost unobtainable anywhere in the country. Tourists must bring in their own dollars or risk running out of cash before their holiday gets into full swing. Luckily electronic funds transfer known as ‘swipe’ is accepted in shops and petrol stations everywhere. I purchased two hundred billion ‘Zim dollars’ in exchange for five US dollars as a fond reminder of our time in the beautiful country of Zimbabwe.

 

Becoming a billionaire in Zimbabwe is easy!

 

All too soon, our journey approached its end. The quirky border post into Botswana sits on the confluence of four different countries (Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Namibia) which baffles the senses but is a legacy of the colonial map makers of the nineteenth century.

Botswana is a beautiful country and an example to the rest of Africa on how to conserve its elephants. There are over 100,000 elephants in Botswana (one quarter of the world’s elephant population). We stayed in a delightful resort called ‘Elephant Sands’ where tourists can have an ‘up close and personal experience’ with a whole herd of elephants! I would love to have stayed longer in Botswana, but that will be for another time. We whistled through Botswana in two days, using their superb roads and friendly border crossings.

Returning to reality in Sydney has been a tough experience for the family. We had made so many new friends and reacquainted ourselves with old ones. I have regained my love for Africa, its people and the abundant gifts of nature it possesses. My family has some understanding of my earlier life in Africa and have had the opportunity to experience the mighty elephant in the wild. But most of all I have returned invigorated and ready to write my fourth book where the heroes will be the elephants and those who protect them.

* https://www.newsweek.com/2015/03/27/africas-conservation-miracle-return-rhinos-316121.html

 


  |  Blog, Reviews, The Last Oracle  |   

Readers’ Favorite Review of The Last Oracle

https://readersfavorite.com/book-review/the-last-oracle

Reviewed by Anne-Marie Reynolds for Readers’ Favorite

The Last Oracle by Christopher Hepworth is a conspiracy thriller, the third in the Sam Jardine series. Rex Dangerfield’s fracking company is aiming to tap into a gas seam in the Greenland ice shelf, a move that will cause untold damage to the environment and the climate. Dangerfield has an enemy though, the one person that will stand in his way and stop him from causing disaster – his daughter. Her mother was Egyptian and she is the Oracle of the Temple of Sekhmet; her job is to stop people like her father from destroying the world. Sam is recruited by the Oracle to try to change the way her father works but something else is standing in the way. A secret society will reap huge profits from the destruction and they will do whatever it takes to remove Sam from the equation. As events escalate, Jardine has to fight his way through corruption, past every person who will gain from the epic disaster about to unfold. Can he stop it in time or is the world about to be destroyed?

The Last Oracle by Christopher Hepworth is a frighteningly real story. Although it is the third of a series, there was enough information provided about the main protagonist so that not reading the previous books did not affect my enjoyment of this story and I believe that this could easily be read as a standalone. We are all aware of the climate changes happening across the world and we are all aware that some of it is down to the way we abuse this planet, stripping it of natural resources and forever changing the delicate balances in place. Both the story and the characters have real depth to them; the action starts from page one and continues right to the last page. The detail in the story is excellent, making for a novel that is real, compelling and truly engaging. It moves fast but never loses sight of the main issues, even through the many twists and turns. Great book, highly recommended for anyone who wants to lose themselves in an epic thriller.

 


  |  Environment  |   

Tuesday (June 5th) was World Environment Day. While many politicians are still in denial about the reality of climate change, large businesses around the world are taking up the challenge to save the planet.

It is my contention that the world will avoid the worst of catastrophic climate change, not because of the political will required to decarbonize our polluted atmosphere, but because it makes sound financial sense to do so. Even companies like BHP who are heavily invested in fossil fuel have recognised the need to make an orderly transition to cleaner power sources.

You may feel that ‘big business’ is part of the problem, but in fact it is driving the agenda for change. For example it is now impossible to obtain finance or make a profitable case to build new coal fired power stations in a world where new wind and solar power plants are now so much cheaper. Motor manufacturers are scrambling to build electric vehicles and the race is on to find effective energy storage solutions. Large investment funds and sovereign pension funds are applying an ethical lens to their investment decisions and those companies who fall short of their environmental, sustainability and governance expectations will find it harder and more expensive to raise capital. Money really does make the world go around, and in this case it is the money trail that is decarbonizing our planet in the nick of time.

My own employer is no exception and I have the good fortune to run a department that spends roughly two billion dollars of its money on a wide range of goods and services. We have decided to put our own ethical lens on how we spend the company’s money and on Tuesday I was asked to present our plans to a group of our environmentally conscious employees.

As well as the usual swag of measures aimed at substituting our goods with environmentally sustainable equivalents, there was one measure that really hit a chord with the audience. It is my team’s intention to include at least one organisation that is majority owned by socially disadvantaged members of our society in every competitive tender that we do. These organisations provide employment and opportunity for individuals from aboriginal backgrounds, the disabled or members of society who have fallen on hard times and are seeking a second chance. These companies may not win the bid, but our commitment is to give them a full debrief of what they need to do next time around. Our hope is that over time they can convert ‘near losses’ to winning lucrative contracts with our company at competitive rates and with service levels equivalent to the best in the country.

Our hope is that we can restore pride, dignity and opportunity to those who may have been short of confidence that the rest of us take for granted. If even one percent of our spend goes to these organisations, imagine the difference we can make to people’s lives!

We want our company’s employees to feel proud and confident that their money is spent in a competitive but ethical, sustainable and socially responsible manner. We are aware that our purchasing decisions affect the economy, environment and communities in which it operates. If you feel the same way about your company, give your Procurement manager a call and ask him or her how your company’s money is being spent.


  |  Blog  |   

For seven painful years, I was taught Latin at school. As it was a pre-requisite for entry to Oxford and Cambridge University I had to drop one of my favourite subjects, Geography to accommodate this dead language. I needn’t have bothered as I soon learned that academically, I was a million miles from ever setting foot in either of those leaned establishments.

Forty years on from completing my final Latin exam, I have realised that my rudimentary knowledge of the language has not been such a waste of time after all. The language is the origin of all the romance languages (French, Spanish and Italian) and thirty percent of the English language can trace its roots to Latin. As a writer, the structure and discipline of the Latin language helps my sentence construction and adds to my vocabulary. We still use so many of their words and phrases without thinking like – agenda, versus, via, memo, alias and alibi.

And best of all, my Latin lessons came pre-loaded with exciting Roman history and wonderful myths and legends. The ancient Romans were one of the most successful societies in human history. Even today their buildings evoke a sense of awe while their laws, institutions and history inspire a sense of mythical wonder. When their empire finally crumbled it took over a thousand years for their achievements be surpassed.

Such is the aura that surrounds the Roman Empire that the mere usage of a Latin expression gives a person a wholly undeserved sense of kudos and knowledge. This is hardly surprising as the Romans assembled a wealth of wisdom and ruled their world with an iron fist for over five hundred years. One could even say ‘quidquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur’ – ‘whatever has been said in Latin seems profound’.

I have picked seven Latin phrases from history that exemplify the noble spirit of the Roman Empire and which, if acted on will allow you to live your life in their proud footsteps.

‘Nulla tenaci invia est via’ – ‘for the tenacious, no road is impassable.’ Unlike our pampered generations, the Romans knew that nothing was ever handed to them on a plate. No other quality (including intelligence, brute force or charm) gets you further in life than tenacity.

‘Referre non quam diu’ – ‘It’s how you live your life, not how long.’ We are on this planet once and therefore we owe it to society to live to the very best of our abilities. If you can’t be a Julius Caesar or a famous gladiator then be kind, courteous and useful to those around you.

‘Praesis ut prosis ne ut imperes’ – ‘lead to serve, not to rule’. This is a phrase long forgotten by today’s politicians and corporate executives. Those who seek power for power’s sake have missed the point. Leadership is about contributing to the common good. Trump, Putin and politicians of all persuasions, take note!

‘Scientia ipsa potentia est’ – ‘Knowledge itself is power’. If this phrase was good enough for Seneca, Cicero and Pliny the Elder, it is good enough for us 21st century mortals. Acquiring and sharing knowledge will improve one’s reputation and influence and hence our success in life. Those who stop attaining knowledge are by definition, old.

‘Si vis pacem, para bellum’ – ‘If you wish for peace, prepare for war.’ A personal favourite. The Roman Empire knew a thing or two about law and order. It did not last for over five hundred years by dropping its guard against the Carthaginians, Gauls and Visigoths. Likewise, if you don’t want to be targeted by modern day vandals, learn a bit of judo.

‘Status quo’ – ‘The existing state of affairs’ or literally ‘in the state in which’. If your rock band, movie, book or blog is complete rubbish, you can add instant credibility and boost your sales by giving yourself a Latin moniker. It could be decades before the public catches on.

‘Ad valorem’ – ‘according to value.’ I had a procurement colleague who used the term ‘ad valorem’ ad nauseam and as it happened, in errata. I can’t remember the events verbatim, but his modus operandi was most vexing, and he rapidly became persona non grata around the campus.

As a postscript to this fable, he offered a fitting mea culpa and resigned by fac simile to begin work on his curriculum vitae. A fitting quid pro quo wouldn’t you say?

 

(With thanks to the article ‘Latin Words and Phrases Every Man Should Know’ by Brett & Kate McKay. https://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/07/25/latin-words-and-phrases-every-man-should-know/)