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Sir Laurens Van Der Post Biography & Facts

Sir Laurens Jan van der Post, (13 December 1906 – 15 December 1996) was a South African Afrikaner writer, farmer, soldier, educator, journalist, humanitarian, philosopher, explorer and conservationist. He was noted for his interest in Jungianism and the Kalahari Bushmen, his experiences during World War II, as well as his relationships with notable figures such as the future King Charles III and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. After his death, there was controversy over claims that he had exaggerated many aspects of his life, as well as his sexual abuse and impregnation of a 14-year-old girl. Biography Early years and education Van der Post was born in the small town of Philippolis in the Orange River Colony, the post-Boer War British name for what had previously been the Afrikaner Orange Free State in what is today South Africa. His father, Christiaan Willem Hendrik van der Post (1856–1914), a Hollander from Leiden, had emigrated to South Africa with his parents and married Johanna Lubbe in 1889. The van der Posts had a total of 13 children, with Laurens being the 13th. The fifth son, Christiaan, was a lawyer and politician who fought in the Second Boer War against the British. After the Second Boer War, he was exiled with his family to Stellenbosch, where Laurens was conceived. They returned to Philippolis, in the Orange River Colony, where he was born in 1906. He spent his early childhood years on the family farm, and acquired a taste for reading from his father's extensive library, which included Homer and Shakespeare. His father died in August 1914. In 1918, van der Post went to school at Grey College in Bloemfontein. There, he wrote, it was a great shock to him that he was "being educated into something which destroyed the sense of common humanity I shared with the black people". In 1925, he took his first job as a reporter in training at The Natal Advertiser in Durban, where his reporting included his own accomplishments playing on the Durban and Natal field hockey teams. In 1926, he and two other rebellious writers, Roy Campbell and William Plomer, published a satirical magazine called Voorslag (whip lash) which criticised imperialist systems; it lasted for three issues before being forced to shut down because of its controversial views. Later that year he took off for three months with Plomer and sailed to Tokyo and back on a Japanese freighter, the Canada Maru, an experience which produced books by both authors later in life. In 1927, van der Post met Marjorie Edith Wendt (d. 1995), daughter of the founder and conductor of the Cape Town Orchestra. The couple traveled to England and on 8 March 1928, married at Bridport, Dorset. A son was born on 26 December, named Jan Laurens (later known as John). In 1929, van der Post returned to South Africa to work for the Cape Times, a newspaper in Cape Town, where "For the time being Marjorie and I are living in the most dire poverty that exists," he wrote in his journal. He began to associate with bohemians and intellectuals who were opposed to James Hertzog (Prime Minister) and the white South African policy. In an article entitled 'South Africa in the Melting Pot', which clarified his views of the South Africa racial problem, he said "The white South African has never consciously believed that the native should ever become his equal." However, he predicted that "the process of leveling up and inter-mixture must accelerate continually ... the future civilization of South Africa is, I believe, neither black or white but brown." The Bloomsbury influence In 1931, van der Post returned to England. His friend, Plomer, had been published by the Hogarth Press, a business run by the married couple Leonard Woolf and the novelist Virginia Woolf. The Woolfs were members of the literary and artistic Bloomsbury group, and through Plomer's introductions, van der Post also met figures such as Arthur Waley, J. M. Keynes and E. M. Forster. In 1934, the Woolfs published van der Post's first novel. Called In a Province, it portrayed the tragic consequences of a racially and ideologically divided South Africa. Later that year, he decided to become a dairy farmer and, possibly with the help of the independently wealthy poet Lilian Bowes Lyon, bought Colley Farm, near Tetbury, Gloucestershire, with Lilian as his neighbor. There he divided his time between the needs of the cows and occasional visits to London, where he was a correspondent for South African newspapers. He considered this a directionless phase in his life which mirrored Europe's slow drift to war. In 1936, he made five trips to South Africa and during one trip he met and fell in love with Ingaret Giffard (1902–1997), an English actress and author four years his senior. In 1938 he sent his family back to South Africa. When the Second World War began in 1939, he found himself torn between England and South Africa, his new love and his family; his career was at a dead end, and he was in depressed spirits, often drinking heavily. War service In May 1940, van der Post volunteered for the British Army and upon completion of officer training in January 1941 he was sent to East Africa in the Intelligence Corps as a captain. There he took up with General Wingate's Gideon Force which was given the task of restoring the Emperor Haile Selassie to his throne in Abyssinia. His unit led 11,000 camels through difficult mountain terrain and he was remembered for being an excellent caretaker of the animals. In March, he came down with malaria and was sent to Palestine to recover. In early 1942, as Japanese forces invaded South East Asia, van der Post was transferred to Allied forces in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), because of his Dutch language skills. By his own statement, he was given command of Special Mission 43, the purpose of which was to organise the covert evacuation of as many Allied personnel as possible, after the surrender of Java. On 20 April 1942, he surrendered to the Japanese. He was taken to prison camps first at Sukabumi and then to Bandung. Van der Post was known for his work in maintaining the morale of prisoners of many different nationalities. Along with others, he organised a "camp university" with courses from basic literacy to degree-standard ancient history, and he also organized a camp farm to supplement nutritional needs. He could speak some basic Japanese, which helped him greatly. Once, depressed, he wrote in his diary: "It is one of the hardest things in this prison life: the strain caused by being continually in the power of people who are only half-sane and live in a twilight of reason and humanity." He wrote about his prison experiences in A Bar of Shadow (1954), The Seed and the Sower (1963) and The Night of the New Moon (1970). Japanese film director Nagisa Ōshima based his film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1982) on The Seed and the Sower. Following the surrender of Japan, while his fellow POWs were repatriated, van der Post chose t.... Discover the Sir Laurens Van Der Post popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Sir Laurens Van Der Post books.