Cecil Rhodes’ Library
Duncan Clarke
Author & Publisher
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Scatterlings
Rhodesians Worldwide
The story of the exodus, exile and ethnocide of 90 per cent of all Rhodesians from Zimbabwe and their survival, adaptation and dispersal across over sixty countries on five continents.
While Rhodesians left home on the ‘land between the rivers’ in serial exits over fifty years, it was after seismic changes including 16 years of bush war, economic sanctions, takeovers by the radical Zanu-PF state, Africanisation, cultural exclusions, hostilities from Mugabe’s party and government, corporate chimurenga, the forced acquisition of assets, land invasions and confiscations, and serial hyperinflations, as well as the initiatives of the Second Republic.
The Rhodesians are today fragmented and scattered societies found across over sixty countries on five continents, their exile initiated from 1976-2026 shaping fifty years of cultural survival after adversity, and in new lands, with adaptation, as told in Scatterlings, the first detailed exposition of this exodus and exiled world found outside Zimbabwe.
Now most Rhodesians are no longer ‘at home’, after dramatic changes that led them in the search for security in foreign lands.
Yet memory remains in published Rhodesiana, culture, lingo, social mores, survival, online and in the world of digitalisation.
On Amazon
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Twilight in Paradise
The ‘Left Behind’ Rhodesians
After fifty years of trials and tribulations there remain but around 15,000 Rhodesians in Zimbabwe, under ten per cent of all worldwide, and a tiny fractional demographic in Zimbabwe.
Most are found today in Harare, Bulawayo, Victoria Fall, Kariba and a few dorps and very few survive in the veld while cultural continuity persists, and the numbers shrink annually.
This story of fifty years of cultural adaptation, survival, drama and trauma, and oft-critical situations faced by the last remaining ‘Left Behind’ Rhodesians still in Zimbabwe is told in Twilight in Paradise.
It’s a revealing insight into modern ‘Zimbo’ culture, including how the traditional habits of the past are retained in the contemporary world; in sports, clubs, arts and socialising in coffee clubs, and restricted suburbia domains, as most Rhodesians have been forced out of the bushveld, into exile in Africa and across the world.
On Amazon
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The House of Stone
An Unwritten Story
The House of Stone was released on Amazon in August 2025. It portrays the literary history of Zimbabwe as seen in ‘the story of the story’ and written by over 250 authors, writers, and biographers during 1975-2025.
The House of Stone is the epic tale of Rhodesia’s faulted transition into Zimbabwe, and the benighted rule of both Robert Mugabe, the Machiavellian president, and under ‘the Crocodile’, Emmerson Mnangagwa, after the coup in 2017 and during the Second Republic.
‘An Unwritten Story’, this tales is told through the first-ever composite literary record of thinkers, authors, biographers and critics and their ideas drawn from around the world, including Rhodesians, about the times, claims, tribulations, economic slide, and chronic failures, fate and tristesse of Zimbabwe in the modern era.
What remains ‘unwritten’ is the story of the future, one yet to be written but ‘revealed’ in the histories of the stories already scripted.
On Amazon
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Zambesia
The Literary Safari
Zambesia, the hidden heart of Central Africa, was terra incognita for millennia, except for the San, its inhabitants for tens of thousands of years. Intrusions by peoples from the north followed from around two millennia ago.
The ‘discovery’ of this interior came after centuries of cartography in Old Europe and by Portuguese on the coast. Revealed as Monomotapa, this ‘unknown land’ emerged as Zambesia from the 1850s. Moffat, Livingstone, Baines, and Selous opened Zambesia to the world after eons of illiteracy. It was Africa’s foremost ‘literary desert’ until Cecil Rhodes in 1890 forged an epic break from its feudal past.
Zambesia: The Literary Safari explains this shift, and how Stone Age to Iron Age history was uncovered. Literacy and literature flourished thereafter as intelligentsia brought the arts of civilisation to this unlettered world. The ‘known’ in 1891 was fractional to that uncovered since, about its geography, landscapes, resources, peoples, histories, San ‘Rock Art’, material cultures, and subsistence modes de vie.
Zambesia was ‘revealed’ in books, journals, and thousands of published works by archaeologists and historians, to shape the most literate society in Africa.
Published August 2024 by Royal Sable Publishing, and on Amazon.
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Cecil Rhodes’ Library
For one hundred and twenty seven years, a secreted Catalogue, listing Cecil Rhodes’ books, seen by privileged few, still unpublished, existed at Groote Schuur in Cape Town
Rarely visited in the last thirty years, hidden in plain sight, rarely exposed in over 50 biographies, ignored by critics, this literary trove offers revelatory insights into the mind, thoughts, aims and actions of this late Victorian Age’s most prominent figure.
Groote Schuur’s assemblage of 2,554 texts include Africana, history, biography, social science, literature, Federation, law, governance, geography, art, science, architecture, Classics (Ancient Greek, Latin, French), novella, and works of reference. The most notable library in 19th century Africa, this collection shaped Rhodes’ thoughts, ideas, acts, and decisions in southern-central Africa.
Rhodes is revealed as an adept bibliophile, literary connoisseur and itinerant nomadic who relied on literature and cartography for ideas, and thoughts in speeches, as Cape Colony premier, 1890-96, and founder of Rhodesia.
These endeavours brought literature to Zambesia, a literary desert devoid of alphabet, pen, writing, or books, from the San to the late 19th century when missionaries, hunters, explorers and traders entered the Great Plateau from the mid-1850s.
The private library acquired and curated at Groote Schuur was bequeathed by Rhodes for posterity. Cecil Rhodes’ Library is the first-ever and only expose of this unique trove that covers Cape to Cairo, and Classics from antiquity to 20th century avant-garde literature.
Cecil Rhodes never crafted an autobiography but scripted a vast ‘grey’ literature and was an avid collector of rare cartography on Africa and the world.
Published in April 2024, by Royal Sable Publishing, and on Amazon.
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The Quiet Rhodesian
Silent Servant, 1909-1981
Royal Sable Publishing’s The Quiet Rhodesian, October 2023 , is available on Amazon in Hardback worldwide.
It tells the story of the author’s father, Gerald Bryan Clarke (1909-1981), who was born in Gwelo, went to St George’s College in Bulawayo (1920-26), and joined the Treasury in 1927.
In time he enlisted in the 5th Southern Rhodesia Armoured Brigade in 1940, deployed to Kenya, Abyssinia, Egypt and Italy in World War II, and was at the liberation of Rome and Florence, before and after encountering action against the German tanks, snipers and military in northern Italy.
On return to Rhodesia, Gerald Clarke re-joined the Treasury, and in 1948 the Public Services Board, then Sir Godfrey Huggins cabinet office as under-secretary (1950-52) when he was appointed Cabinet Secretary and Secretary to the Prime Minister in 1953, thereby acting for Garfield Todd, Sir Edgar Whitehead, Winston Field and Ian Smith, until retirement in November 1970.
On Amazon
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Accidental Author
Fifty Years Writing, Africa and the World
Accidental Author tells the story of over 50 years of writing by Duncan Clarke on Africa and the world, from 1969 to date.
The book tells the tale of unforeseen twists in life and history that shaped the writer’s fifty years of texts scripted in multiple forms. Published by Royal Sable Publishing, is found on Amazon worldwide.
From an ordinary life growing up in Central Africa, turbulent times led to writing in academe, then as a one-man band, and when unemployable, later for survival, and when in time employed, and then out in the cold once more.
Mishaps, mistakes, and accidents in history marked this nomadic journey from a neophyte to writer, with texts scripted for private or public record, and corporate interests, while personalities met shaped works written, and the ‘unwritten word’, or parole, with an enormous ‘literature’ of published and unpublished works rendered in nonfiction.
The outcome was the founding of a firm, its monies based on texts written and sold, and as an advisor, scripting strategy briefings and in conference parole, that played its part in the global oil game.
Advisory work engaged over one hundred institutions in Africa, Asia, Europe, The Americas, and Russia.
On Amazon
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The Last Rhodesians
Society Adrift
The Last Rhodesians: Society Adrift was published in March 2022, and is found on Amazon in Softback, and distributed in South Africa by Protea Books. The book provides an extensive and in-depth text on Rhodesian origins in history, its cultures, identity and literature.
It treat with the bush war, Cold War players, serial exoduses that took place over the last fifty years and destiny lived by Rhodesians, as well as the ‘left behind’ in the aftermath encountered in the House of Stone.
The Last Rhodesians provides unique insights on this distinctive landlocked culture’s origins, identity, and social imprints in southern Africa, and as an evolutionary saga of initial and later adversities, with decades of economic success, that after 16 years of bush war and sanctions led to its eventual demise, sunset and the ‘fall’ of Rhodesia.
In this epic odyssey, the saga of negotiated Cold War drama, external aided and funded insurgency, and then negotiated settlement brought an end to the de facto state in 1979, with the emergence of Zimbabwe in April 1980; but ‘Rhodesians never died’.
On Amazon
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Rhodes’ Ghost
The Conquest of Zambesia
The ‘historical autobiography’, Rhodes’ Ghost: The Conquest of Zambesia, published in 2020 by Royal Sable Publishing is available on Amazon. The book tells the inner tale of Cecil Rhodes and time in Africa, 1879-1902, notably in regard to his thoughts and actions, involvement in the Jameson Raid and the founding of Rhodesia.
The life, times acts and thoughts of Cecil Rhodes, from arrival in Africa to the conquest of Zambesia, and foundation of Rhodesia, and on modern critics in over 50 biographies written, as well as portrayed in films from the 1930s onwards, and in press, media texts, satire, documentaries, television, plays, poetry, cartoons, video, on YouTube and in contemporary politics.
Rhodes’ Ghost is written as if an ‘autobiography’, and it tells this story from Rhodes’ retrospective point of view, including death in the Cape, the funeral train to Bulawayo, and the burial in the Matopos Hills at World’s View – as well as during an ‘afterlife’.
On Amazon
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Three Decades in the Long Grass
The Story of Global Pacific & Partners
As Founder and Chairman of Global Pacific & Partners, 1978-2016, the author wrote Three Decades in the Long Grass, 2014, with Babette van Gessel.
The book tells the 37-year long story of the firm, one that created foundation research, advisory practice worldwide, strategy briefings on world oil and all continents, and an allied conference suite inside Africa, Asia, Latin America, America, Europe, Australasia and the MidEast, plus daily news networks and private Clubs (PetroAfricanus one) found on Six Continents, and technologies built within the world oil industry.
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Published Books: World Oil & Energy
Other books by the author include Africa: Crude Continent (2010), and Africa’s Future: Darkness to Destiny, 2012.
Earlier was The Battle for Barrels: Peak Oil Myths & World Oil Futures, in 2007, and also Empires of Oil: Corporate Oil in Barbarian Worlds, 2007.
All four books were published by Profile Books in London.
In addition, the author scripted numerous advisories for over 100 corporate and state oil industry entities, plus several unpublished works on Africa’s oil industry, as well as on Asia, Latin America, MidEast and corporate strategy in world oil and energy.
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Published Works: Rhodesia / Zimbabwe 1974-1981
Books by the author on Rhodesia / Zimbabwe, and Southern Africa, were published in the 1974-80 era: Domestic Workers in Rhodesia: The Economics of Masters and Servants (1974); Contract Workers and Underdevelopment in Rhodesia (1974); Unemployment and Economic Structure in Rhodesia (1976); The Economics of African Old Age Subsistence in Rhodesia (1977); The Distribution of Income and Wealth in Rhodesia (1977); Agricultural and Plantation Workers in Rhodesia (1977); Foreign Companies and International Investment in Zimbabwe, 1980.
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T he Grandfather
Rhodesian Saga, 1897-1941
The book on Amazon, about Francis Joseph Sheil O’ Cleary Clarke’s handwritten diary tells the tale of a man at the centre of several notable events across Southern Africa and Rhodesia. It was originally published in 2015 as Grandfather’s Diary, edited by the author.
Arriving by wagon in Bulawayo in March 1897, after three months trek from Pretoria, and taking coffee with ‘Oom’ Paul Kruger on the president’s stoep, this Irishman, 1870-1941, first met Colonel Frank Rhodes in Cape Town, in 1895, joined the Jameson Raid, and bought the black stallion that Dr Leander Starr Jameson mounted to ride into the Transvaal in the quest to aid the Uitlanders in Johannesburg.
The Grandfather joined the Native Department in Bulawayo, later defended the Limpopo boundary from incursions during the Boer War, and became a Magistrate in Fort Victoria, Gatooma, Harley, Gwelo, Umtali, and Enkeldoorn, as well as in Salisbury in a 33-year career in Rhodesia’s government.
The original text was released as an Occasional Paper by the History Society of Zimbabwe. Its availability outside Harare is limited and so another enhanced version was scripted for Amazon worldwide, and is to come out in early 2025. The Grandfather includes several additions to the original Diary of 2015: with Prologue, Epilogue, and Appendices on Chronology 1870-1941, and Irish-Rhodesian Origins, Bibliography 1895-1941.
The book is published by Royal Sable Publishing in Parts I-VIII, with 17 Chapters, and 11 Illustrations and Maps. The Grandfather was published in Hardback in March 2025, at 243 pages, and is found on Amazon.
On Amazon
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Kindle e-Books Series: On Amazon
The Zambesia Chronicles
Royal Sable Publishing has released its Series of Vols 1-7, The Zambesia Chronicles, on Kindle only, for direct acquisition online, each Title available at $4.99.
Zambesia’s Origins: Terra Incognita
Lost Peoples of Zambesia: The Stone Age San
Strangers in Zambesia: El Dorado Discovered
Zambesia’s Wilderness: The Early Explorers
Zambesia’s Revelations: Literature & Literati
Zambesia’s Landscapes: Populus & Historia
Watersheds in Zambesia: Ruins, Disputes, Historians
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The Cecil Rhodes Collection: On Amazon
Rhodes and ‘The North’
Biographers & The Bibliophile
Africana & Cartography
Art, Biography, Geography, Maps
Classics, The Mind & Thoughts
Chronology & Bibliography
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Rhodesiana: On Amazon
Another 36 titles in Kindle format are found on Amazon, drawn from the Duncan Clarke Collection
