Peggy Barnes was born under the sodden clouds and coal-smog of the English Black Country, during the depression. Her penniless family immigrated to Cape Town, when she was nine. She blossomed into a beauty, rambling in the sun-drenched and heather-scented Cape Mountains. She married a war hero, and learned to love his rustic Afrikaans family. For half a century, she was in the turmoil of parliamentary opposition to the apartheid government. As a white liberal, she represented a species of humanity which is now extinct in South Africa, so her inimitable personality encapsulated a unique era.