Pilgrims Rest

by Michael Nicholson

When Mary Llewellyn’s husband is killed in a battle between Welsh and English miners in poverty-stricken Wales, she resolves to forge a new life in the South African sun with her children. However, after overcoming a dangerous journey beset by snakes, crocodiles and hostile warriors, all is not as they had hoped in the village of Pilgrims Rest. Change is on the move in 1870s South Africa and Mary, Huw, Ianto, William and baby Tom are right in the middle of it. Battle breaks out first between the Zulus and the English, then the English and the Boers. And as Ianto’s hatred of the people who killed his father causes him to take up arms for the Boers, brother is pitted in battle against brother.

Genres: Historical Fiction

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Michael Nicholson OBE (born 9 January 1937) is an English journalist and former ITN Senior Foreign Correspondent.
Born in Romford, Essex, Nicholson attended the University of Leicester and is one of the world's most decorated and longest serving British television correspondents. Nicholson joined ITV in 1964 and over the ensuing forty years he reported from 18 war zones: Biafra, Israel, Vietnam, Cambodia, Congo, Cyprus, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Indo-Pakistan, Northern Ireland, Falklands, Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo, the Gulf Wars, 'Desert Storm' 1991 and 'Shock and Awe,' Baghdad 2003.
During the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in July 1974, Nicholson's car broke down just as Turkish paratroopers were landing over his head onto the island . Nicholson walked up to the first of them and greeted them with 'I'm Michael Nicholson. Welcome to Cyprus'. His film was flown back to London on an RAF plane and made the Evening News the next day. A world scoop.
Nicholson was ITN’s first bureau chief in South Africa, based in Johannesburg from 1976 to 1981 and the first television correspondent to be allowed to live in apartheid South Africa, a brief covering Africa from Cape Town to the Sahara. During this time Nicholson covered the Soweto riots, spent much time in UDI Rhodesia covering the war of independence and was the first foreign journalist to interview Robert Mugabe on his release from prison.
In 1978 he and his cameraman Tom Phillips and sound recordist Micky Doyle, were in Angola to interview the UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi. Pursued by Cuban mercaneries working for the communist MPLA government, they were trapped and spent for four and a half months in the bush, walking a total of 1,500 miles, trying to escape. They were eventually airlifted out in a dramatic escape.
In 1981 he returned to England, motoring overland through Africa and Europe with his wife Diana and two small sons, Tom and William, a six month journey of some twelve thousand miles, recorded in the book 'Across the Limpopo'.
Nicholson was on holiday in the Lake District when the Falklands War began. Flown by a chartered aircraft to Southampton he boarded the aircraft carrier 'HMS Hermes' for the six week journey to the South Atlantic. At 45 years old, Nicholson was more experienced than all his journalistic colleagues: "But this was the first war, other than Northern Ireland, where I was among my own people. It made it a very special war and the Falklands a very special place." Nicholson and BBC journalist Brian Hanrahan (on his first major foreign story)were regularly flown over to the Royal Fleet auxiliary ships to broadcast their phoned reports, as broadcasting from Royal Navy ships was forbidden. After the conflict, Nicholson was awarded the South Atlantic Medal

Reviews

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I lent the book "Don't lets go to the dogs tonight" to a colleague, who in turn lent me this book. It is the story of a Welsh widow who takes her four sons to South Africa to make their living digging gold.

The story is wound through the history of the country, but as usual there is a problem with knowing how much of that is true. In a preface to the book Nicholson admits that not all events described are historically correct, that he has taken some liberties with the truth. Not being that knowledgeable about the history I am having to treat the whole thing as fiction, which is a bit frustrating.

I enjoyed the story, but wasn't moved by it, finding it a little bit fairytale. Mary, the widow, seems to arrive in Africa with a lot more gold sovereigns than seems reasonable for the widow of a man who had been on strike for months, and at times the surrounding country is described as fearfully dangerous, and other times it isn't. I was reminded of Wilbur Smith, someone who I used to be a big fan of until I began to feel that I was reading the same story over and over again.

[Gerold Whittaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Welsh woman and her sons move to South Africa after the death of her husband. The cause of her husband's death breeds a hatred for the British and this has dramatic repercussions for all of them later, especially her sons. After a traumatic trip to Pilgrim's Rest a period of tough-but-peaceful life begins but it's not long before that is shattered - war between the Boers and the English - and the peaceful life at Pilgrims Rest comes to a dramatic end.

Set in about 1874, this is a work of Historical fiction and includes most major events of the times. The author has of course, to paraphrase his own words, used a few liberties.

[Lynn Fordred · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my usual subject matter but I enjoyed the book and would recommend it.