London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988

8vo, pp. 429. Original black boards, lettered in gilt on spine. Very light spotting to top edge, otherwise a fine copy in a dustwrapper sunned at the spine, but otherwise near fine.

First edition, WARMLY INSCRIBED TO PETER HAIN BY DONALD WOODS: 'For Peter, on your 40th birthday, an appropriate gift -- your personal contribution to the goals and the liberation of Mandela will never be forgotten. 17/2/1990 Donald and Wendy Woods.'

Donald Woods began his professional life in South Africa as a cub reporter on the radical newspaper The Daily Despatch, and rose through the ranks to become its editor in 1965. He was close friends with the Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko, murdered by police in 1977. Woods' secretly-taken photographs of his friend's battered exposed the government cover-up of the cause of Biko's death.

Peter Hain's parents were radicals active in the Liberal Party of South Africa. By the age of nineteen Hain was chairman of the Stop The Seventy Tour campaign and, at great personal risk, led protest marches and pitch invasions of South African rugby and cricket tours in order to oppose apartheid. In 1972 he was sent a letter bomb, which failed to explode. Having emigrated to Britain he became a founder member of the Anti-Nazi League in the late 1970s. (He was also a vice-president of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, forerunner of Stonewall). He migrated from the Liberal Party to Labour, and served in a number of Cabinet positions under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Nelson Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990; six days later Donald Woods presented this book to Peter Hain to mark Hain's 40th birthday, the two men's joint struggle, and, crowningly, one of the most joyous events of the twentieth century.

A wonderful association copy, affectionately inscribed by one hero of the anti-apartheid movement to another.