Michael Du Preez Biography
Capetonian by birth and education, Michael graduated M.B., Ch.B. from the University of Cape Town in 1958, and became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1963. He specialised in Urology, training at St. Thomas', the Institute of Urology and Great Ormond Street in London, before returning to the Cape in 1967, complete with a wife, and baby daughter. He practised both privately, and at Groote Schuur Hospital and the Red Cross Childrens' Hospital as a Urologist from 1967 to 1994, introducing important innovations, and after that in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, until retiring in 2001. Teaching always played a major role in his activities throughout his entire career.
His wide range of interests has included Travel, Architecture, Fine Art, Music (he plays the 'cello), Horticulture, Dog Breeding (Chow Chows) and, with the passage of time, Medical History. While he represented his school at tennis and hockey, and his University at golf, his favourite sport proved to be sailing - specifically yacht racing - both inshore and offshore. In 1965 he participated in a Tall Ships Race, and in 1986, following an Atlantic and Mediterranean crossing, he sailed his ketch to Turkey where, annually over a decade, he travelled and cruised before finally swallowing the anchor. It was following his presentation on the subject of Dr. James Barry, at a meeting of the Senior Fellows' Society of the R.C.S. in 2003, that he was fired with the desire to more fully investigate the truth about the life story of that unique and remarkable woman. Ten years later, the need for a Literary Agent arose ...
How I Found the Agency
A chance meeting with Cape Town publisher, Robin Stuart-Clark, led to a discussion where Robin magnanimously suggested that my work warranted international exposure. Due to his efforts and those of his London associate, the first pitch ended up on Andrew Lownie's desk - quite coincidentally - for Andrew's was the only agent's name in my annotated copy of the 2012 Artists' and Writers' Yearbook, to which I had months before allocated two stars, as a wishful potential 'good fit'.
I can only admire the way Andrew, with his suggestion of Jeremy Dronfield to 'doctor' the typescript, has moved the project along.
