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Lest I Forget A Chequered LifeLest I Forget A Chequered Life

Rafe Bates

  • Biography/Autobiography

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Why I wrote this book

From frustration that I was getting old and hadn’t properly written-up my vast experiences for my descendants. I was also annoyed by misreporting and misrepresentation of quite recent history by those who rely on hearsay and have no direct experience themselves, and who are often enslaved by political correctness. I feel strongly on this point particularly when it becomes accepted as truth.

Why should a reader buy it?

Good-looking quality hardback with eye-catching unique cover. Will stand-out in bookshelf. Illustrated with photos and drawings by author. Varied and historical, with background in different countries including Kent/Sussex area for local interest as well as in-depth African experience and wartime voyage. Very wide appeal to many interests. Outspoken, some philosophy, difficult to put down. Quality book at very reasonable price. A very unusual and different publication.

Synopsis

Memoirs with a difference – packed with adventures and immediate first-hand experienced history and natural thinking, with few punches pulled.

Written in a straightforward readable style with no concessions to pretentious narration, this is as it really happened.

The author says: “This is my story, and covers the years from well before WW2 to the present day. I have lived a full adventurous life but I am frustrated by the fact that all my experience is wasted because of my inability to pass it on. This book is my attempt to rectify that, so my children and grandchildren will know what it was like then; to correct some third-hand history and to explain what I have learnt from it and to show how my thinking has evolved in consequence.

The book is factual and accurate, and is consequently outspoken. My own thoughts on many matters are included. The sadness and humour, with very personal memories, are not shirked.”

About the Author

Born in Iden, Sussex, where great-grandfather ‘Pater’ Bates held the living of Iden for 60 years. Went to six different schools in four different countries – England, Rhodesia, S.Africa, Switzerland, England again, for total of five disrupted years. After unexpectedly matriculating, went immediately to farm in Africa where lived adventurous life in bushveldt and grew innovative crops, exploring, fishing, shooting, painting and motor-racing. In S.Africa lived in Drakensberg Mountains, designing and building houses and winning famous Roof of Africa mountain road-race in car designed, built and driven by author. Moved to Cape Town where designed and built 50’ aluminium alloy schooner “Long John Silver” with subsequent long-distance ocean voyaging with family crew to leaving Africa for good; to manage forestry and other works in Scotland, with more travels, to eventually settle in the Açores to resume writing from the slopes of a volcano in the mid-Atlantic.

Book info

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Genres
Format

Hardback
368 pages pages

Author

Rafe Bates

Publisher

Matador an imprint of Troubador Publishing

Publication date

1st December 2011

ISBN

9781848766518