Every year I go to South Africa to see my children and grandchildren. Perhaps this is the time to relate my own attitude towards relations between white and non-white South Africans. Over the years my perspective has changed considerably.

I grew up accepting, as did my parents, that the British settled throughout the world with the highest of motives, which were to ‘civilise’ the indigenous people of the lands where they settled. Canada, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand and, in my father's time, Ireland, had a Viceroy but were largely independent in their home administration and many other countries throughout the world were British colonies. It was regarded as regrettable that the United States had seen fit to break away from England; George III was considered much to blame for this! The large colonies, such as India with mixed Hindu and Muslim peoples, were known to be difficult to rule but, fortunately, Britain kept the internal peace and defended the country against outside invaders; for example, they defended India against incursions from Russia on the Afghan frontier. Stories by Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling were much admired. Kim was read by every English schoolboy. It was believed then, and I still think it was correct, that colonial rule by Britain was by and large benevolent and honest, not perhaps today a popular view. Cecil Rhodes was regarded as a hero in my younger days because not only had he developed the diamond mines at Kimberley, he had brought Matabeleland and Mashonaland under British rule as Rhodesia and he had the great dream of white civilisation under Britain ‘from the Cape to Cairo’. Today this sounds old-fashioned and we certainly know much more of the other side of the picture.

It was by chance that I was offered a passage as a ship's doctor from Liverpool to South Africa; it might just as easily have been to Australia, New Zealand or Canada. In 1947 there was no question of choosing because paid passages were not available.