Peter Hain's Decade in Cabinet Began With a Letter Bomb at 19

Lord Peter Hain was 19 when he led campaigns against all-white South African sports tours, drawing a letter bomb in response. His parents had already faced jail, bans, and exile for their own anti-apartheid work. That early exposure to political struggle defined his trajectory across 24 years as a Labour MP, including 12 years in government and seven in Cabinet. Hain authored 30 books alongside his parliamentary career. His latest, Smuggler Kingpin, published by Jonathan Ball, is a thriller centered on African tobacco and gold trafficking networks where Zimbabwean corruption and South African organized crime intersect. The novel arrives in South African bookstores this month, with Hain scheduled to visit in August for events including a launch at Exclusive Books Hyde Park and a lecture at Gibs Business School. By contrast, his reading life runs toward the analytical. In a pre-visit interview, Hain cited Mark Leonard's Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail as recent reading of note, pointing to its analysis of China's technological advancement and strategic positioning against the West. His physical routine is equally deliberate: regular walking, consistent gym work, and occasional Pilates to address core strength. Near his home in Gower, South Wales, he frequents King Arthur Pub for casual meals. On the Cape Peninsula, he retreats to Café Roux in Noordhoek Farm Village, a place that speaks to the country his family once fled and to which he keeps returning. Picasso's Guernica ranks as the artwork he will always love, drawn to its depiction of the Nazi bombing of a Basque village during the Spanish Civil War in 1937. He has supported Chelsea in the Premier League since 1965, a loyalty rooted in his family's displacement from South Africa to southwest London before his teenage years. Small loyalties matter too. He named rooibos tea as an item he cannot live without, a quiet thread back to southern Africa. For a desert island, he would take three songs: UB40's Red Red Wine, Katie Melua's If You Were a Sailboat, and Hot Water's Lekker Sakkie. Whether Smuggler Kingpin can match the audience his nonfiction has long commanded will become clearer when Hain faces South African readers in August.