Smith specialized in historical fiction about the international involvement in Southern Africa across four centuries
Smith was born in Broken Hill, Northern Rhodesia (now Kabwe, Zambia). His father was a metal worker who opened a sheet metal factory and then bought a cattle ranch. “My father was a tough man”
As a baby, Smith was sick with cerebral malaria for ten days but made a full recovery.
He gained a film contract with his first published novel When the Lion Feeds.
Smith became a full-time writer
He developed three long chronicles of the South African
Wilbur still acknowledges his publisher Charles Pick’s advice to “write about what you know best”, and his work takes in much authentic detail of the local hunting and mining way of life
Smith was working for his father when he married his first wife, Anne, in a Presbyterian Church on July 5, 1957, in Harare (Salisbury), Zimbabwe. There were two children of this marriage – a son Shaun was born on May 21, 1958 and then a daughter Christian.