Cape Argus, 28 February/1 March, 1998:
Harold Strachan, a founding member of both the Liberal Party and Umkhonto we Size, is about to publish his autobiography …[He was} the ANC’s first (successfuol) bomb maker and first (failed) saboteur …Harold Strachan has shoved a few blooms from his own astonishing life up our nostrils with an invitation to let the pollen tickle … Strachan can rival a Bosman belly laugh. But this humour was forged under stress, and the crucibles of a life lived shooting arrows across the bows of apartheid. Imprisonment, a 10–year banning order and attempts on his life … had by 1993 finally shattered his marriage and his children, both of whom were psychologically traumatised … If the writing has been good therapy for him, his language and humour are medicine for South Africa … The first book …Way up, way out, takes us from his early childhood in the Transvaal to his teen years in Pietermaritzburg up until the completion of his combat flying training towards the end of World War 2. He has already written the second …