Ray Wilson

Exculpation is Ray Wilson's debut novel. It reflects a passion for South Africa, a country he has visited regularly over the past thirty years, gaining insight and inspiration for the compassion, humour and political intrigue that are all captured in this book. Ray was born a cockney, within the sound of Bow Bells in London's East End, in the same area as his great-grandfather, Joseph Mersh, the son of Polish emigres, refugees from the failed 1848 Spring of Nations revolution. Around his fourth...See more

Exculpation is Ray Wilson's debut novel. It reflects a passion for South Africa, a country he has visited regularly over the past thirty years, gaining insight and inspiration for the compassion, humour and political intrigue that are all captured in this book. Ray was born a cockney, within the sound of Bow Bells in London's East End, in the same area as his great-grandfather, Joseph Mersh, the son of Polish emigres, refugees from the failed 1848 Spring of Nations revolution. Around his fourth birthday he was uprooted by government policy and dislocated to Bracknell New Town, where he spent his childhood and teens in an earnest post-war phenomenon that mixed menacing dollops of social engineering into brave new world minimalist architecture and the nascent shopping malls of J G Ballard's fiction. Flunking college on his first attempt, he sped off in a panic to find himself and discovered Africa. Backpacking from London he pitched up in Ethiopia to the first of the many recent famines. Returning to the UK, as a recruitment agent Ray organised the first ever political rent-a-crowd. As advertising man, he earned a visit from the Special Branch, after which he stopped producing merchandise for the IRA (it had been in ignorance, such a pretty emerald-green logo) and started a production run of unanticipated longevity for the Free Mandela campaign. In between, he helped launch The Mail On Sunday and the music industry magazine Smash Hits; produced material for The Buzzcocks' first release, together with hundreds of thousands of badges for the Morning Star, enabling readers to proclaim, I didn't vote Tory. He supplied publicity materials for the first Zimbabwe elections and badges for Diana's marriage to Charlie. He qualified as a hot air balloon pilot and flew over the Alps, took off from the first hole at Harare Golf Club in a golf ball-shaped balloon and traversed an extinct volcano close to Bophuthatswana in Southern Africa. He also flew over an aircraft in the UK with the call sign RAF 1, considerably more hazardous as it resulted, only moments later, in his being buzzed by a Tornado. Returning to college later than most, he read Politics at Bristol University, specialising in South Africa and compounding a passion for the country which he has visited and travelled though many times since. The friends and colleagues who worked to shape the new South Africa have been inspiration for Exculpation. See less