Reading Matters (week 031) 29 July 2025

The haunting blast of a steam train’s whistle, now relegated to history, fills the pages of author, journalist and broadcaster David Williams’ On the Railway – the Great South African Train Story (Tafelberg).

Once the country’s biggest employer – 260 000 people at its zenith, the railway network, once the pride of the African continent, and the lifeblood of commerce and industry here, is a wrecked and pale shadow of its former glory.

The latter is not ignored by Williams but he concentrates, colourfully and expertly, on tracks that opened up our massive country, harking back to 1860 and ending at today’s doleful situation.

Williams is a railway child, one-time steward and lifelong rail enthusiast.

This book will be enjoyed by businesspeople, industrialists, historians and those of us whose childhoods were infused by engines that thundered through the night and steamed through our days.

I was a journalist on The Argus when Dr Chris Barnard performed the world’s first human heart transplant in 1967 so The Story of a Heart (Little Brown/Jonathan Ball) in which Rachel Clarke recounts the true story of two British children’s hearts, instantly grabbed me.

Keira (9) is rushed to hospital after a car accident leaves her brain dead. Max (9) is slowly dying from a failing heart when he is offered Keira’s. Both children come from warm, loving families.

Clarke, a medical doctor, and an outstanding author, interviewed everyone, including the parents, about the transplant. The result is a book that had me crying, with sorrow and joy.  Unmissable.

Reading Matters with Sue Grant-Marshall