Lust, Lions and Lucre!
How unrepentant womaniser and big-game hunter Wilbur Smith has just struck a killer book deal worth at least £10m – aged 84
WILBUR SmIth’S 34 rip- roaring novels have sold more than 130 million copies in 25 languages around the world.
they have netted him £100 million, a jet- set lifestyle and the opportunity to indulge his obsession with big-game hunting. he has homes in London, Cape town, Switzerland, malta, Ireland and, not long ago, a 22-acre private island in the Seychelles — until, sadly on their honeymoon, his fourth wife Niso developed an allergy to coral and he sold it.
So you’d think that, given he’s 84 and has suffered several health scares, he’d be ready to put his feet up and enjoy his vast fortune with beautiful Niso, 45. Perhaps even try to build bridges with his three estranged children, before it’s too late?
But no. Because just five years after he switched publishers — from Pan macmillan to harperCollins in a six-book deal, rumoured to be worth £15 million — he’s at it again. this time the move is from harperCollins to new fiction publishing house Bonnier Zaffre in an eight-figure sum described as ‘one of the biggest in publishing history’.
It includes rights to eight new books, as well as the English language rights to all his books, including classics such as When the Lion Feeds, Elephant Song and River God. this is more impressive than it first sounds because, although Smith says he is still pestered by the voices of his characters telling him their stories of lions, lust and Lugers, these days most of his books are co-authored.
Perhaps even more surprising is that his books and their heady and politicallyincorrect whirl of sex, violence, casual misogyny, big-game hunters, mining, fullbreasted women and slaughtered beasts, have such enduring appeal today.
he credits his extraordinary success and continuing appeal to the advice of his old agent, Charles Pick, who told him to write for himself not his readers and, most of all, to base his writing on what he knew.
he became the ultimate action-man author who rarely made his heroes tackle something he hasn’t. So he’s swum with tiger sharks, been charged by lions and elephants, been shot three times, chased by crocodiles, was still climbing mountains in his 50s and scuba-diving in his 60s. HE
has also shot a worrying number of wild animals. Until recently, he went on safari at least three times a year.
‘my aim is to shoot three buffalo and three elephant,’ he once said.
mercifully for the animals of africa, a heart valve operation meant he had to hang up his gun several years ago. But his Facebook page still shows him regularly wrestling with enormous Icelandic salmon and vast trout.
Born in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), he was inspired by the books of hemingway and Steinbeck, but most of all by his father, who had his own cattle ranch and taught Wilbur to hunt.
‘he was a man who lived life on his own terms and made his own rules,’ Smith once said. ‘he knew what it was like to be a real man.’
Young Wilbur killed his first animal when he was seven and refused to bathe for days, because he didn’t want to wash off the blood. When he was 15, he killed his first lion — with a shotgun, in self-defence, when hunting.
his lifestyle has caused a few ripples over the years, but Wilbur isn’t really the sort to care what people think. he collects daggers, guns, Rolex watches and african art and considers elephant tusks to be things of great beauty, rather than contraband.
and he has no truck with ‘modern man’ whom he thinks is too afraid to stand up for his beliefs. he claims to be a feminist, but when asked in an interview what his most prized possession was, he replied ‘my [fourth] wife’.
It goes without saying he’s never changed a nappy, despite having three grown-up children.
One can’t help wondering whether his relationship with his children would have been a little better if he’d occasionally put his machismo to one side.
he once said of his offspring: ‘they’re not part of me. they’ve got my sperm, that’s all.’
When his eldest two, son Shaun and daughter Christian, were little and he was divorced from their mother Jewell and paying alimony, he quibbled over maintenance of just £10 a month, and demanded receipts for clothes.
at the time, his career was yet to take off and money was short.
But later, when Shaun and Christian went to visit their father after he had married his third wife, Danielle, at her instigation they were not allowed into the house and instead were taken camping.
his relationship with his younger son, Lawrence — born during his second marriage, to anne — went the same way. and years after adopting Danielle’s son, Dieter Schmidt, he fell out with him.
In an interview in 2014, he said of his relationship with his children: ‘You just have to laugh it off . . . It’s all about the money. and if they feel they’re not getting a fair share of what they think should be theirs, that’s bad luck to them.’ When asked if his success might have exacerbated things, he said: ‘I don’t think it’s because I’m a writer. I think it’s because they did nothing to win my respect, and in fact did exactly the opposite.’
happily, his disastrous personal life doesn’t seem to have affected his confidence. Or his ability to churn out bestselling books. he is astonishingly successful, with an ego to match.
THE first song he chose when he appeared on Desert Island Discs was Frank Sinatra’s my Way. he regularly re-reads his own back catalogue and happily praises it.
he is also refreshingly open about sex — doing it, thinking about it, but most of all writing about it. Presumably, Niso is his inspiration. he describes their relationship as being ‘like Siamese twins’ — they do everything together and live a ‘secluded’ life.
She lays out his clothes, reminds him to take his medication, runs their houses and sorts out his travel and entertainment agendas and encourages him to write, but she is clearly no push over. She once said: ‘When I met him, he was 66 years old and I never had any doubts he would be faithful. I said to him: “Darling, you can have Russian lap dancers any time you like, but just remember, before you put your pants back on, it will be all over the papers.” ’
It was Niso who first noticed the terms of his publishing contracts hadn’t been updated for ten years. Perhaps it was she who encouraged him to move publishers again. Whatever, they clearly adore each other and are very happy.
Which is a good thing, because he rattled through wives before he met her in a WhSmith’s in London. after Jewell and anne came Danielle thomas, a young divorcee and huge fan of his books from his home town. they were married from 1971 to 1999, when she died from brain cancer.
happily, a year after Danielle died, he spied tajik-born Niso browsing in the Dan Brown section. She was young (just 27) and stunningly beautiful.
he led her to the Wilbur Smith section and they started talking. the rest, as they say, is history.