Marianne thamm biography

Other influences on her young life were Bob Marley and Leonard Cohen. After her studies she joined the Cape Times, then edited by the renowned Tony Heard. After covering the crime, courts and municipal beats, she joined the arts section. In those days, she had to watch a performance, rush back to the office and write the review before lunchtime.

It was supposed to appear the next day. If you wanted to interview someone, the actor had to come in and sit right next to you. Tomorrow it's in the newspaper. Later she decided to go overseas. She returned and went to live with a close friend in Mtunzini in KwaZulu-Natal. They gardened, planted vegetables, chopped wood and read, read, read.

Back in the Cape, she worked for You magazine for a year and wrote, among other things, about a man who set himself on fire because his mistress had left him. She visited him in hospital but he was unable to speak, his lips burnt. She left him a R10 note in his Bible. Then she decided to go abroad again and ended up in Antwerp, marianne thamm biography she met the Belgian celebrity writer Tom Lanoye.

They became old gabbas. With another mate, the artist Philip Badenhorst, she worked with her hands again and helped him restore a restaurant. At home I work in the garden myself. Indeed, she has a lovely, secluded garden with two guava trees where she lies outside when the sun is shining and reads newspapers or books. Her library in the house is enormous.

If she ponders a column before writing it, she puts her headphones on and thinks on the stoep or in the garden about how she is going to tackle it. Dogs run around and over the years they have had many, with names such as Snowy, Sugar, Suzy and Ollie. They are not simply animals. Like the four hens, they are part of the family. These chickens lay eggs every morning.

With the children in the house, there is constant life with friends coming in and out, laughing, talking loudly and sleeping over. Recently, she posted a clip on Facebook of how she wakes up her late-sleeping daughter with the vacuum cleaner rattling under her bed. On weekends I do all the housework, polish everything, dust, and stay physically busy.

I don't have to go to the gym, housework keeps me fit," she says. Many days she gets up at 4am to work because she enjoys it. She can work at any time of the day or night. The doyenne of magazines, Jane Raphaely, in her Femina title wanted to publish more articles on hard news events and politics. She invited Marianne for an interview. The editor laughed.

Marianne thamm biography

She got the job as a features writer. Although I had known Marianne since the early s, this was the marianne thamm biography time we had worked together for the same company, then Associated Magazines. At the time, Jane published numerous titles. It was the time of big money in the business, advertising was rolling in, all stories were possible. There was enough time to do in-depth investigative journalism.

When you interviewed someone, you spent a whole day with them. A lot of research went into each article. Journalists were flown around chasing stories. Every night Jane took home a pack of magazines such as The New YorkerTime and Vanity Fair and the next morning there was a photocopy of an article on your desk — a proposal or idea for a new feature.

The best photographers were hired, stylists, page layout artists and sub-editors. We thrived in this milieu for years, but after some time we got ants in the pants and went full-time freelance. There were more than enough publications to enable us to write on a wide variety of topics. Because we worked on our own, we talked on the phone every day, when people still called each other.

Look at the scene today: millennials get offended when you call. It was at this time that Marianne decided to tackle her first non-fiction book. She had no idea if it was going to work but she took the plunge into the abyss. They cut Alison's throat and nearly beheaded her. The men stabbed her so many times that the number of wounds could not be counted, and her internal organs were falling out of her torso.

She was able to run to a road by holding her intestines and was assisted by a motorist. After an intense recovery process and many operations, Marianne started talking to her about a book. I Have Life: Alison's Journey was born, and it was an overnight success; both were completely blown away by it. More books followed and Marianne also wrote about Callie and Monique Strydom who were held hostage for four months in the Philippines.

See Vrye Weekblad's interview with Monique here. Her autobiography, Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and Me, was translated into Dutch as De ondraaglijke blankheid van het bestaan: Een bewogen leven in het land van Mandela The unbearable whiteness of existence: An eventful life in Mandela's country. Books about the singer PJ Powers and the crime fighter Paul O'Sullivan followed, and in between she wrote freelance articles that clicked.

Her columns in Fairlady have been published as a collection. Still there was time for other activities. Celebrity Birthdays Journalist Marianne Thamm. More Journalists Molly. Molly Ivins. Willow Wilson. Rafael Marques. Joana Treptow. Diego Odoh Okenyodo. Tom Verducci. James Russell Wiggins. Mats Knutson. Yury Vlasov. Elizabeth Bruenig. Caitlin Rother.

Zhanna Agalakova. Related Posts Karl. The email and all the questions and answers can be read here:. To date she has not responded. Marianne Thamm Marianne Thamm was born in England in where her German father had been a prisoner of war and met Thamm's mother, a Portuguese domestic worker. The email and all the questions and answers can be read here: On 3 November another invitation for an interview with Wouter De Swardt was sent to Thamm via lawyer Johan Victor.