The namesake of the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize was known for his thrilling novels, all of them meticulously researched on his numerous expeditions. "I have lived a life that I could never have imagined," says Smith. "I have been wherever my heart has desired and in the process my books have taken readers to many, many places." Here are the real-life experiences that have been the raw material for his fiction, including a lion attack and close encounters with reef sharks, crawling through gold mines and getting lost in the African bush without water, marlin fishing with Lee Marvin and crash-landing a Cessna airplane.