Promptly at 7 a.m., Jan Christian Smuts begins his daily, imperial chores.
The white hair and beard have thinned; the furrows of nigh 74 years line the veld-weathered face that Frans Hals might have painted. But the pale blue eyes are tirelessly alert. The thinning figure, rather gaunt now, slippered and with a trace of a stoop, moves briskly.
From his London hotel window South Africa's Prime Minister can look across Hyde Park's greensward—too sleek and flat for one who loves to walk the rough sandstone of Table Mountain or the undulant, spacious land...
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