This book is part of my attempt to describe my relationship with the land and its animals.I started off thinking being English was good, and African bad. Partly because I came from a foul political system, and partly because culturally it was so inadequate compared to here. However, since my revelation, I've come to love African culture - it is wonderfully rich, which even the worst of colonialism could not stamp out. But the 19-year-old me thought that culture was something to put aside, and Britain was something to aspire to. When Greg and I booked our Christmas holiday, I got terribly excited: I'm going to get my African fix.

We're even talking about retiring there, most probably east Africa rather than the south. It is the Africa of my imagination: the views are so vast, populated by huge herds of wildebeest, I feel I can look right across the continent It is truly addictive. I'm much more interested in communicating from the soul, no longer in technical acting, which must have been inevitable, because I'd constructed a personality that wasn't mine.These days, I often remember my childhood experience of sunlight surfacing and find myself wanting, needing that again: a cold summer like the one we've just had can really start to do something in my blood. I suppose I've come to terms with the bits I thought I didn't like about myself It has certainly changed my acting. Resolving my various closets has, I hope, made me understanding of other people I'm certainly less judgemental about my parents. It was ridiculous, because I was them anyway; you cannot separate yourself just by living in England! What white South Africans did, appalling though it is, was a terribly human thing to do: lead the good life if you can and ignore everybody else's suffering.

Life is much more in the raw.Getting back in touch with Africa has also been part of the reconciliation with my parents. The problems were tied up with their support, even as middle of the road citizens, for apartheid. But Africa was the powerful one: my birth place, my homeland. Whatever your mind may be doing, something comes up from the land and says: "You are mine." I may relate to Britain with my head, but with Africa it is not just my heart, but also my belly and my skin It excites me and frightens me. Somehow, in this sensuous experience, I could separate Africa from the shit of the old South Africa.