Building Trustworthy Semantic Webs

Laurens van der Post, best-selling writer, war hero, mystic, broadcaster, adventurer, Jungian, diplomat, confidant of Margaret Thatcher and guru to Prince Charles was a fantasist who invented much of his life. In this officially sanctioned, posthumous biography, Jones, a writer and journalist specialising in South Africa, has uncovered the truth about the Afrikaner who decided to reinvent himself as a pillar of the British establishment. The author takes us in detail through van der Post's childhood in the Orange Free State, his wartime experiences, his travels and the period of his worldwide fame, particularly as champion of the Bushmen of the Kalahari. At each stage he unpicks the truth from van der Posts's increasingly wild claims. We discover a spellbinding storyteller, often loyal, kind and charming, who was also a ruthless self-promoter, lying about his family, falsifying his military record, covering up his affairs (most notably one with a 14-year-old which produced a daughter), exaggerating his political influence and friendship with the eminent and borrowing his Bushmen stories from another writer. When he decided to use his influence in the real world, for example by promoting Chief Buthelezi rather than Nelson Mandela to the British Government, van der Post's paternalistic politics and 'mythical' thinking meant that he seriously misread the eventual outcome for South Africa. Does being a fantasist matter for a writer? Jones analyses the content and the reception of each of van der Posts's books, and concludes that when a writer will not distinguish between fantasy and reality in his own life he forfeits the trust of the reader. This is a thoroughly researched, compellingly readable and skilfully written biography which is as enthralling as a detective story and leaves us with disturbing questions about the way we are persuaded to make public figures into secular saints. (Kirkus UK)