The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela review – one man’s otherworldly patience
Nelson Mandela's letters from prison seem to demand a spoiler alert. We know how this epic turns out - but the uncanny thing about reading this selection of close-written correspondence is the unavoidable sense that its author always knew the ending in advance, too.
Mandela was born a century ago this week. The conviction that his story would make history, that it would have a triumphant last act of truth and reconciliation, hardly ever appears to have faltered within him. Not when the judge sentenced him to life imprisonment at the end of the Rivonia trial in 1964. Not when the door slammed behind him aged 45 as prisoner 466/64 in an 8ft by 7ft cell on Robben Island, his home for 18 years. Not even when, in 1969, his eldest son, Thembi, was killed in a car crash - a tragedy that followed less than a year after the death of Mandela's mother - and he was refused permission to attend the funeral (just as he had been his mother's).
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