Archives for July 2012

IT was a funny place to be reporting on a football match, the Driehoek Stadium in the industrial heartland of  South Africa. On his travels through Africa as a young man, Don Bentley had taken work where he could find it and he had secured employment as a sports journalist on The Star  in Johannesburg. Bentley’s position on The Star’s sports desk was a lowly one and as a measure of his status he did not get to cover headline sports like rugby union, cricket, athletics and … [Read more...] about A sports-writing career on the line

IN a room above a pet shop on Commercial Road,Woking, a writer was at work. No one ever saw him, either at the window or at the door on the ground floor leading to his office, but the tap-tap of the typewriter and steam from a kettle misting the widows indicated work in progress, art being forged in that austere, simple workplace. Don Bentley often lingered outside the pet shop, looking up at the first floor window of the red-brick, two-storey Victorian building with blue … [Read more...] about Room at the top

Don Bentley sat in the coroner’s court wondering what was about to unfold, what story was hidden in the brief item on the court list which merely mentioned the name of the deceased, age and date of death. What was interesting in his case was the age of the person who was the subject of the inquest. He was 19 years old, just two years older than Bentley himself and the young Bentley already had a sense of foreboding about Item One on the coroner’s schedule for that … [Read more...] about The inquest

Don Bentley sat at his desk, trying to piece together the events of the night before.  He had no memory of this time and space that had been the previous evening. But something had gone on there. Something had happened, something momentous; so momentous it had stopped his colleagues in their tracks, and they were still talking about it after the event. Colleagues were visiting his desk at The Star  in Johannesburg, seeking him out in the sports department at the end of a … [Read more...] about The Tartan Terror

Don Bentley had always tried to keep the long arm of the law at a safe distance during his young life but every Friday morning, down at the magistrate’s court, the law came a little too close for comfort. It was not that Bentley was a villain in any way, or harboured criminal intentions. He just happened to know people who sometimes strayed from the path of righteousness, only to find their new path led directly to the dock of the Woking bench. Bentley would groan when he … [Read more...] about The wrong side of the law