I Shot My First Lion At The

When I Vacate This Sack Of Old Bones I Won't Care What You Do With It. Bury Or Burn It But Don't Make Much Fuss.

At The Age Of 12 I Won The School Prize For Best English Essay. The Prize Was A Copy Of Somerset Maugham's 'introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To This Day I Keep It On The Shelf Between My Collection Of Forester's Works And The Little Urn That Contains My Mother's Ashes.

I Wanted To Be A Great White Hunter, A Prospector For Gold, Or A Slave Trader. But Then, When I Was Eight, My Parents Sent Me To A Boarding School In South Africa. It Was The Equivalent Of A British Public School With Cold Showers, Beatings And Rotten Food. But What It Also Had Was A Library Full Of Books.

It Was This Same Jesus, The Christ Who, Among Many Other Remarkable Things, Said And Repeated Something Which, Proceeding From Any Other Being Would Have Condemned Him At Once As Either A Bloated Egotist Or A Dangerously Unbalanced Person...when He Said He Himself Would Rise Again From The Dead, The Third Day After He Was Crucified, He Said Something That Only A Fool Would Dare Say, If He Expected Longer The Devotion Of Any Disciples-unless He Was Sure He Was Going To Rise. No Founder Of Any World Religion Known To Men Ever Dared Say A Thing Like That!

I'm Not A Good Father And They're Not Children Any More; The Eldest Is In His Fifties. My Relationship With Their Mothers Broke Down And, Because Of What The Law Was, They Went With Their Mothers And Were Imbued With Their Mothers' Morality In Life And They Were Not My People Any More.