Richard Wood Author & Editor

Richard Wood was born in Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He is a graduate of Rhodes and Edinburgh universities. He was a Commonwealth scholar and the Ernest Oppenheimer memorial research fellow at the University of Rhodesia and thereafer held a personal chair at the University of Durban-Westville, South Africa. He is a fellow of the Royal historical society and of the Alexandrian defence group. Fortunate to have sole access to the then closed papers of Sir Roy Welensky, he wrote The Welensky papers: A history of the federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland: 1953-1963. Based again on sole access to the hitherto closed papers of Ian Smith and other private collections, he published the complementary works So far and No further! Rhodesia's bid for independence during the retreat from empire, 1959-1965 and A matter of weeks rather than months: The impasse between Harold Wilson and Ian Smith; Sanctions, Aborted settlements and War: 1965-1969. In the military history field, he has published: The war diaries of Andre Dennison, Counter-strike from the Sky: The Rhodesian all-arms fireforce in the war in the bush: 1974-1980, Africa@war volume 1: Operation Dingo: Rhodesian raid on Chimoio and Tembue, 1977 and volume 5: Zambezi valley insurgency: Early Rhodesian Bush war operations. He has contributed chapters to other works: 'The Rhodesian issue in the historical perspective', in A.J. Venter's Challenge: Southern Africa in the revolutionary context, 'Fire force' in Venter's The Chopper boys: Helicopter warfare in Africa and 'Countering the Chimurenga: The Rhodesian counterinsurgency campaign 1962-1980' in Daniel Marston's & Carter Malkasian's counterinsurgency in modern warfare. He has also contributed articles and reviews to a variety of journals including the Journal of African studies (Pretoria), Military illustrated (London), the Marine corps Gazette (Quantico), Small wars and Insurgencies (London), Military history (Leesburg), The journal of the Army historical research (London) and the Lion & tusk (Southampton). From 1956-9 and 1970-80, he served in the 1st and 8th Battalions of the Rhodesia regiment, and as second-in-command of the research section of the Mapping & research unit of the Rhodesian Intelligence Corps. He lives in Durban, South Africa.