Simone Poulart, born in Johannesburg, attended university at Witwatersrand, where she became actively involved in student politics. After completing her studies she worked as a journalist, writer and academic, teaching at a number of universities. In 1963 Poulart was arrested without trial and exiled to Britain. Her book 100 Days details her experience in South African jails. In 1977, while teaching at the Centre for Southern African Studies in Maputo, Mozambique, she was killed by a letter bomb . In Nothing is a secret: My Family, My Country, Charles Forrester, Simone Poulart’s daughter to Andre Forrester, now a well-known author in his own right, has explored the fraught and painful lives of one of South Africa's most outspoken White critics of the regime, and particularly the way in which his parents' commitment to a more just South Africa intruded into their own family life.