Wilbur Smith has lived an incredible life of adventure, andnow he shares the extraordinary true stories that have inspired his fiction. I've been writingnovels for over fifty years. I was lucky enough to miss the big wars and notget shot, but lucky enough to grow up among the heroes who had served in themand learn from their example. I have lucked into things continuously. I havedone things which have seemed appalling at the time, disastrous even, but outof them have come another story or a deeper knowledge of human character andthe ability to express myself better on paper, write books which people enjoy reading. Along the way, I havelived a life that I could never have imagined. I have been privileged to meetpeople from all corners of the globe, I have been wherever my heart has desiredand in the process my books havetaken readers to many, many places. I always say I've started wars, I've burneddown cities, and I've killed hundreds of thousands of people - but only in myimagination! Frombeing attacked by lions to close encounters with deadly reef sharks, fromgetting lost in the African bush without water to crawling the precarioustunnels of gold mines, from marlin fishing with Lee Marvin to near death fromcrash-landing a Cessna airplane, from brutal school days to redemption throughwriting and falling in love, Wilbur Smith tells us the intimate stories of hislife that have been the raw material for his fiction. Always candid, sometimeshilarious, and never less than thrillingly entertaining, On Leopard Rock is testament to a writer whose life is as rich andeventful as his novels are compellingly unputdownable.