Liz Wilson (photo: The SA Horseman)
Dorothy Parker is credited with saying, ‘The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”.
If she had added in ‘and then light my cigarette’, the description could have been custom made for Liz Wilson, for so many years doyenne of the SA Horseman and SA Racehorse Magazines, who died at home on Friday, 16 March 2018.
Liz’s extraordinary capacity for cigarettes was matched only by her quick wit and the fearlessness with which she used it. Her entry in South African Racing’s Who’s Who reads: Sarah Elizabeth Wilson. Owner / Breeder. Colours granted: 1966 (dark green, scarlet cap). First winner: Wild Rice (1967 – Newmarket). Interests: Gardening, lying in the sun. She had horses with JF ‘Cookie’ Coetzee and subsequently Terrance Millard and Peter Kannemeyer and latterly Joey Ramsden. She introduced Ronald Napier to racing.
Writing
Alongside Mary Slack, Liz established and co-edited the SA Horseman, which later merged with Eppie Nelson’s SA Racehorse. Regular contributor Tarquin Norval first became acquainted with Liz when he was approached to write for the magazine. “I enjoyed writing for her. She was always up to date with all sorts of information. Her and Mary made a formidable team – both intelligent horse people who weren’t afraid to say their thing.”
“Liz was very forthright, in fact, fearless in terms of expressing thoughts and not afraid to stand up and say ‘I think X and this is why’ – a quality that is sadly lacking nowadays. She smoked like a chimney. It was her trademark, that cigarette. Even her little editor’s pic in the SA Racehorse was her with a cigarette.”
“What I remember most are our lovely chats the year of the first outbreak of equine flu. She loved Danger Beach in Muizenberg. During the summer racing season, Liz and I spent many hours on the beach talking about racing because there was no season. That even included the Jaffees, who were also Muizenberg / St James-based people, as were the Becks. There was much activity of racing folk on Danger Beach that summer – we didn’t have anything else to do!”
“Liz was a stickler for detail and would make mincemeat out of anyone who was not up to scratch. She was probably not everyone’s cup of tea in that respect – it’s not everyone’s idea of fun to be at the receiving end of a lashing – but having said that, where she had a very sharp tongue, she was fair and if something was good, she said so. And she was funny. The SA Racehorse is a publication unlikely ever to be equalled again in this country. She will be missed.”
Alison MacKenzie
Alison met Liz at a dinner in Johannesburg. “In those days I rode the lead horse at Turffontein, Caradoc, and I wanted him to have a holiday. Liz had a lovely house out at Diepsloot at the time – she always had lovely houses and lovely gardens – she was a great gardener. Caradoc went for his holiday, but he was quite naughty and I don’t think she liked him. Either way, he was never invited back and I don’t think he ever went anywhere on holiday again!”
Alison also joined the SA Racehorse team and took over as the editor when Liz moved to Cape Town. “Then it was all taken on by Primedia and they didn’t want the Racehorse anymore,” she notes sadly. “Liz started the Equus Awards. It was first sponsored by Holiday Inns many years ago and she got Sally Manley involved. They used to bring out beautiful speakers like John Lawrence. Liz was responsible for that and I don’t think she ever got the credit she deserved. Liz was a great friend to me, a really great friend. I learnt more from her about many things than anyone else in my life.”
Mary Slack
Liz’s friendship with Mary Slack lasted a lifetime, providing great fun with their writing as well as racing horses together.
“We had great fun with the magazine – Liz did the racing and I did the riding. She was deeply in love with Terrance Millard who we all called ‘the Oracle’ and could say no wrong. She wrote very rude columns, but she did it so wittily. She was great. At yearling sales time we spent quite a lot of time discussing what we were going to wear. We used to go to them as a kind of social event – it was fun. It was quite different from now,” she says wistfully.
They raced together on and off for many years, latterly as the Desperate Housewives Syndicate. “Liz said ‘we might not all be housewives, but we’re all desperate!’
“She was witty and scary sometimes. At some point she wrote a column for the Financial Mail on racing. Evidently they had another racing person as well, in case Liz’s failed the lawyer!”
She received the Sports Journalist of the Year Merit award in 1987 for this column, the first to be awarded to a woman.
‘The Oracle’, Terrance Millard, remembered her as “a very great friend, very active in all horse activities, including polo, who will be remembered well by myself and all riding people.”
Family
Sarah Elizabeth Shaffer was born on 20 September 1937, grew up in Parktown, Johannesburg and went to school at St Andrews. She was one of three children and has two brothers – one a psychiatrist in New York and the other an expert on oriental textiles. She married Robin Wilson in April 1961 and the couple have a daughter, Sarah Jane.
Sarah Jane relates that Liz was always crazy about horses from an early age. “Her father had some race horses and she was interested in riding to start with, then racing and breeding. She loved all animals, actually.”
With regards to her writing, Sarah Jane remembers, “What she loved doing was going around all the stud farms getting advertising for the magazine. She loved the farms and the breeding, particularly the Karoo farms. For a while she and her great friend Georna Goodman had a naming agency, where they named racehorses for breeders – people would send in lists of the breeding and they would come up with clever names.”
Liz met her husband, Robin Wilson, in Johannesburg. “She was particularly taken by the fact that he played polo and hunted,” continues Sarah Jane. His parents had a stable yard in Inanda and that was very much the sort of lifestyle she fancied,” she smiles fondly.
Liz was quite determined to marry him, although Robin only came round to the idea a little later. “They were both invited to a party once where you had to dress up as what you wanted to be. Robin went as James Bond, Liz went as a bride.” The two married in April 1961.
The Wilsons shared many common interests, including horses, dogs and watching football and Liz was a big fan of David Beckham. Sarah Jane is married to Grant Stubbs (of the Highlands Stubbs family) and the couple have two children, Oliver and Katy, both much adored by Liz.
Sarah Jane continues, “She was not conventional and didn’t care what people thought of her. She was famous for her smoking and her witty put downs – she didn’t suffer fools and she had a low boredom threshold, but she was very kind and always incredibly hospitable to anyone who came her way. Lots of people depended on her because she was so unshockable. Her telephone rang constantly with friends asking for advice on any number of issues.”
There will be a memorial service in the Holy Trinity Church, Main Road, Kalk Bay at 11:30am on Tuesday, 27th March 2018 and all are welcome.
