Like many demobilised British soldiers, Peter Mackay - a former captain in the Brigade of Guards - migrated to Southern Rhodesia in the 1950s, planning a new life as a farmer. That appears to be just about the only characteristic he shared with his fellow whites, whose racism and small-minded, money-grabbing ways he quickly found repellent. Mackay was steadily drawn into the campaigns of a generation of idealistic would-be revolutionaries working to dismantle the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and with it the system of settler rule. He comes across as a thoroughly decent man, possessed of vast reservoirs of compassion, blessed with an instinctive understanding of his fellow man and tireless energy. Mackay proved the most valuable of backroom assistants to the likes of Hastings Banda, Dunduzu and Yatuta Chisiza, Sketchley Samkange, Masauko Chipembere, Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe.