Stuart Cloete
| Stuart Cloete | |
|---|---|
| Born | Edward Fairly Stuart Graham Cloete 23 July 1897 Paris, France |
| Died | 19 March 1976 (aged 78) Cape Town, South Africa |
| Occupation | Novelist, essayist, biographer and short story writer |
Edward Fairly Stuart Graham Cloete (23 July 1897 – 19 March 1976) was a South African novelist, essayist, biographer and short story writer.
Cloete was born in Paris to Margaret Edit Park, granddaughter of renowned Glasgow banker Edward Fairley, and Lawrence Woodbine Cloete from South Africa, whose grandfather Henry Cloete had been Special Commissioner in Natal. He was educated in England at Lancing College, a school which at present gives out a yearly prize in his honour to a student who excels in literature and creative writing. At Lancing he joined the Officers Training Corps and at the age of seventeen took the Sandhurst entrance exam. From there he was commissioned as a Second-Lieutenant (at the beginning of the First World War in 1914) into the Ninth King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, before later transferring to the Coldstream Guards. He was wounded in August 1916 and three days later arrived in London to be nursed at King Edward VII's Hospital Sister Agnes, at 9 Grosvenor Gardens, before convalescing in Hove, Sussex.
He published his first novel, Turning Wheels, in 1937: it became a best-seller, selling more than two million copies. Importation of the book was subsequently banned in South Africa, owing to its commentary on the Great Trek, the event in which the book is set.
Many of his 14 novels and most of his short stories are historically based fictional adventures, set against the backdrop of major African, and, in particular, South African historical events. Apart from Turning Wheels, another prominent novel, 1963's Rags of Glory, is set during the Boer war (with, according to its foreword, much of the historical information based on Rayne Kruger's Goodbye Dolly Gray.) Two of his novels were turned into movies: The Fiercest Heart (1961) is based on his 1955 novel of the same name, and Majuba, released in 1968, is based on his 1941 novel The Hill of the Doves. Film producer Albert R. Broccoli attempted to film Rags of Glory in the mid-1960s with David Lean directing, but Lean subsequently – despite his initial interest in the book which he called "very good in an awful sort of way" and its subject matter – rebuffed the offer. By 1974 Broccoli still intended to film the book.
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