Richard Stengel.
RICHARD STENGEL: NELSON MANDELA BIOGRAPHY
LONG WALK TO FREEDOM (1995)
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Nelson Mandela (born 1918) served as President of post-apartheid South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was President of the African National Congress party from 1991 to 1997. A member of the Thembu royal family, he studied law at the University of Witwatersrand and practised as a lawyer in Joannesburg. He joined the ANC in 1943 at the age of 25, and co-founded its Youth League the following year. He engaged in anti-apartheid sabotage activities, and was repeatedly arrested, being eventually sentenced in 1962 to life imprisonment. He served 27 years of this prison sentence, being released in 1990 by President F.W.de Klerk. Mandela led the ANC to success in 1994 in South Africa’s first multi-racial general election.
Long Walk to Freedom is an account of Mandela’s life, ghost written by the American journalist and editor Richard Stengel. It was based on numerous taped interviews with Mandela. The Financial Times, in its review of the book, wrote: ‘Their collaboration produced surely one of the great autobiographies of the 20th century’. The Times wrote: ‘The authentic voice of Mandela shines through this book’.
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Richard Stengel (born 1955) is a journalist, editor and diplomat, most of whose career was spent at Time magazine. He was appointed in 2000 as managing editor of Time.com. In 2006 he became manaing editor of Time magazine. From 2014 to 2016 he served as Barack Obama’s Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Born to a Jewish family in New York, Stengel was educated at Princeton University. He was also a Rhodes Scholar, studying English and History at Christ Church, Oxford University.
