The Tumbrel Diaries

Following upon the success of his Unholy Pilgrims , my nephew and godson Tom Trumble has lately been on assignment in West Timor, where he w...

Photograph courtesy of David Murray, www.leopardantiques.com Before Groot Constantia I collided with Cape silver at the slave lodge,...

The week before last I went from Cape Town to Pretoria aboard the Blue Train. The journey takes about 30 hours, and the train stops only onc...

Distrik Ses, the sixth municipal district, was a busy, relatively cosmopolitan neighborhood of inner Cape Town, roughly bounded by the docks...

The menu called it “the wine that seduced the crowned heads of Europe, consoled Napoleon in exile, and was featured in the novels of Charles...

There is no need for an alarm clock in Cape Town. Egyptian geese do the job. Alopochen aegyptiacus is a noisy creature, and busy. A pair...

Last week when I went to meet our extraordinarily hospitable colleagues at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, they gave me mor...

If you have never ventured into the South African bush, or visited what is still soberingly referred to as a “game reserve,” it is difficult...

For some weeks past there has been an occasional pre-dawn visitor to my garden—an especially large and elegant skunk. She sashays slowly acr...

I have lately been pondering some matters connected with Anglo-Indian language, prompted in that direction not merely by current events ( ...