Margaret Hayes
To purchase
titles by Margaret Hayes, please visit the author's
website or contact
Webb Publishing.
Gin
and Platonic and Other Short Stories with a Twist
Sometimes all it takes is a little encouragement
to discuss and draw out a past adventure, an experience
or, for instance, something unusual seen during a war,
or on a hunting expedition.
Gin and Platonic is a collection
of 60 short tales and observational prose written by 40
people of varied professions from around the world. Some
stories are fictional, others straight from a truthful
heart, but best of all, the authors have good stuff to
write about; and each story in this book has a surprise
twist at its end.
Compiled with love and encouragement
by author and journalist Margaret Ann Hayes, Gin and Platonic
is an eclectic and entertaining journey into our creative
and multi-dimensional world.
Safarini: Many Journeys
Safarini: Many Journeys is a cross-section of the diaries
written by Margaret Ann Hayes, from 1958, while on adventurous and
photographic safaris with her husband, friends and sometimes with
their children.
As a District Agricultural Officer with British Government, her
husband, Victor Burke, expert in the growing of tea, coffee and pyrethrum,
took many safaris into rural areas where Margaret, a photo- journalist,
met and wrote about the African people with whom she met and made
friends.
Other safaris took them into the famed Maasai Mara to watch and photograph
lions at an evening kill, elephants watching over their young, hyena
waiting for herds to come and drink at dusk and the many other interesting
animals and birds who live there.
Over the years, safaris led to Lake Baringo, Lake Hannington, and
after an English leave, the family were stationed at Lake Nakuru
where flamingo and other water birds were studied and photographed.
In Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater, known as the 'Cradle of Man' she
met leopard on a kill, wondered in awe at the millions of wildebeest
and zebra that roamed the crater and the prides of black-maned lions
who hunted them. She looked at the graves of pioneering ecologist
Dr. Bernhard Grzimek and his son Michael, both set with a marker
on the Crater rim. Michael died when his zebra-striped plane crashed
after it hit a vulture during the filming of Serengeti Shall
not Die. His father completed the book of the same title, spending
the rest of his life working to support wildlife conservation, especially
in Tanzania. Photographs of Dr. Grzimek and his son beside the plane
in the Serengeti, were given to Margaret by Dr. Grzimek shortly after
his son's death. The photographs are seen in this book.
"I'm Only the Editor"
This is the true story of Charles Hayes, a man who, from the time he was a school-boy
essay-winner in England, set out to become a writer and news broadcaster. A lifetime
of adventure led him, as a young articled clerk in a London lawyer's office,
to WW2, when he became an Infantry Officer in the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders.
After his experiences in Burma, he was sent in 1946 to Simla in the Himalayas
where, a year later, he was present at the partition of Pakistan and India.
On his release from the army, he boarded a ship in India bound for
England with his wife and two young children. After a four-day stop-over
on the East African coast they decided to go no further. He accepted
a post as District Officer in Kenya, a country which he was destined
to enjoy for the next 35 years.
With a 'golden' voice, he was the perfect 'stringer' for BBC - the
British Broadcasting Service for Foreign News, sending daily reports
to the world and was an avid news writer for several English and
South African newspapers. He also used his voice, and his love of
acting, to star in many theatrical productions and films shot in
Kenya.
By the early 1950s, as Mau Mau (The War of Liberation)
threatened Kenya, Hayes was instrumental in starting the first Kishwahili
newspaper and, as Editing Director, soon developed the Standard
Newspapers (Nation Series) Ltd., publishing daily and Sunday
newspapers in the English Language. In the early 1960s, His Highness,
the Aga Khan, bought shares in the company which now has the largest
newspaper coverage in East Africa.
On his retirement in 1980, Hayes immigrated to British Columbia,
Canada, with his third wife, Margaret, and young daughter, Caroline,
to start a small-town weekly newspaper, The South Okanagan Review,
which was published for 15 years.
Between 1996 and his death in April 2000, at the age of 85, Hayes
wrote a book on Kenya and 3 books on British Columbian pioneers.
This Love Letter as a Biography captures the spirit of the Indian
and African adventures and experiences of a remarkable gentleman,
Charles Hayes.
