What Was Wilbur Smith's Childhood Like?

Wilbur Smith, the prolific fiction writer, was born on the 9th of January 1933. He was born on what was then Northern Rhodesia. He was the son of a Victorian English man and refined and well read mother. The English had come to Rhodesia for the same reason the white man had traveled to everywhere else: The sickness of Greed. His father's estate measured over 12,000 hectares on which the natives of Africa worked to earn a living.

In this huge backyard his companions were the black children of his father's employees. Wilbur Smith loved the company of his father whom he idealized, his mother who thought him his love for books and his companions who thought him adventure. He developed an affinity for hunting and guns from an earlier age and got his first .22 Remington when he was eight years old; He's definitely for the NRA.