Mogens and Dorothy – The Adventurers

Before the scandals, before the wealth, and long before 10 Sterling Street, there were Mogens and Dorothy—two wildly different souls who somehow found themselves heading in the same direction.

My father, Mogens, was born in Copenhagen in 1919. He grew up in a city pressed between two world wars—where improvisation and resilience weren’t traits so much as essential life skills. He claimed he taught himself English by watching American films with Danish subtitles. Was it true? Possibly. It certainly matched the man I came to know: inventive, curious, and never one to sit still if there was something new to master. Copenhagen toughened him up without knocking the charm out of him. He could talk his way in—or out—of anything, usually with a smile.

My mother, Dorothy, entered the world two years later in 1921, born on a rubber plantation in British Malaya. Her father, Bernard Wilkinson, was a self-made industrialist who invented Linatex—an abrasion-resistant rubber compound that made him a fortune and ended up playing a key role in the Allied war effort. Dorothy’s early life was tough, their home in the Ding Dings was hundreds of miles from civilisation. She recalled once walking with her mother and older sister along a jungle path to bring Bernard his tea at his laboratory, which was set apart from the house for safety. Suddenly, a tigress with two cubs appeared in their path. They froze. After what felt like an eternity—but was only a few seconds—the tigress vanished back into the jungle, her cubs scrambling after her. At five, she was sent back to England to be raised at Hazlewood, a grand estate in Tunbridge Wells, under the stern eye of a governess. Her parents would come out from Malaya for six-month stretches, every two years. Her upbringing instilled in her a quiet steeliness that would reveal itself when it was needed.

Their paths collided in 1947 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Dorothy, escaping the austerity of post-war Britain on a cruise ship with her family, met Mogens, who was working as an interpreter for the Dutch East India Company. Mogens was charming, of course, and he proved impossible to resist. Her father, Bernard, was less impressed. Mogens was a divorcé, a failed marriage to Solveig Kehlet, heiress of a Danish photography empire already under his belt, not to mention a toddler Torben, formally adopted by Solveig's parents. Bernard considered him penniless and risky. But Dorothy didn’t scare easy. Despite Bernard threatening to disown her, she married Mogens anyway. He showed up at the registry office anyway with a grim smile and handed them a £500 cheque—a reluctant olive branch from a man who knew resistance was futile.

In late 1947, the newlyweds packed up their hopes and sailed for South Africa. Europe was still clawing its way out of the wreckage of war, and South Africa—still part of the British Commonwealth—offered open skies, open markets, and, crucially, a familiar face. They had also considered Canada and Australia, but my mom had already met Dick and Claudia Spargo, whose engineering firm, R.J. Spargo, held the Linatex franchise in South Africa. At least in Johannesburg, they would know someone.

When they arrived, Mogens couldn’t get a work permit—South Africa wasn’t issuing them to Danes. But Dorothy, although now Danish by marriage, still could because of being born British. And so, while my dad sat at home plotting his next move, my mom became the sole breadwinner. She got a job as the personal assistant to Basil Hersov, the son of the man who founded Anglo-Vaal, one of the country’s major mining empires. During the war, my mom had worked as Bernard’s PA, traveling up and down Britain inspecting installations where Linatex was being fitted into the fuel tanks of planes and military vehicles for its self-sealing properties. By all accounts, she was exceptionally good at it. In a strange twist of fate, decades later, I would date Basil’s daughter Rowena for about a year post-divorce.

With Dorothy working and Mogens home with baby Briony, domestic harmony… didn’t exactly flourish. One infamous family story tells of a card game Mogens was deeply engaged in with some Danish cronies. Briony, still in nappies, soiled herself mid-game. Rather than interrupt his card game, Mogens punched two holes in a plastic bag, stuffed Briony’s legs through, and encased the soiled nappy. When Dorothy came home, she found her daughter calmly sitting there, sealed up like hazardous cargo—and her husband utterly unbothered.

Eventually, Mogens found a way to contribute. His first gig? Writing radio scripts for a local Western series—possibly called Bold Venture or something equally heroic. It brought in a bit of income, but the breakthrough came when he leveraged his old Kehlet family connections back in Denmark. He secured the Stella Nova photography franchise for Africa and convinced a British gentleman they’d befriended on the ship out to South Africa to loan them the startup capital. With two Hasselblad cameras and a healthy dose of audacity, Stella Nova was born.

At first, they focused on wedding photography, scraping together enough to buy a plot on Ashley Avenue in Bryanston—becoming the first house on the street. They built it themselves, brick by brick, with Mogens, Dorothy, and a handful of casual labourers. The garage became their workshop; the guest bathroom, their darkroom. And, inevitably, it produced one of the family's earliest legends

They used a specific kind of photographic paper that required peeling off a backing strip. These were casually tossed behind a large trunk. Occasionally, they’d hear a rustling sound coming from the pile, and one day, Dorothy decided it was time to confront the presumed rat. She took a dowel rod and began prodding around. What rose up instead was a full-grown Egyptian spitting cobra—its hood level with her face. Shielding her eyes with one hand, dowel rod in the other, she screamed for Mogens to get his gun. He returned what felt like hours later and calmly shot the cobra through the head with his .25 Browning—an amazing feat in and of itself. When she asked what had taken so long, he replied, “I was on my way to the bedroom to get the gun when the red light came on in the darkroom—I had to get the Venters’ wedding prints out or they’d be ruined.” Mogens always knew where his priorities were.

The business truly took off in the early 1960s, when South Africa became a republic and introduced the passbook laws under apartheid. Black South Africans were required to carry ID books, complete with photographs. Stella Nova—by then a known and efficient photo studio with outlets across the country—became the go-to supplier for these ID photos. The queues stretched around the block in all the major cities. 

By the mid-1960s, the family had moved into a mansion at 10 Sterling Street, Waverley—a sprawling, lavish home that symbolized everything Mogens and Dorothy had built from nothing but nerve, charm, and a few second-hand cameras. Life there was big, boisterous, and just chaotic enough to stay interesting. Niels and Briony, my much older siblings, grew up surrounded by every luxury:  tennis court, swimming pool, a private movie theatre setup, and of course many servants.

By then, Mogens had taken up flying with his usual full-throttle enthusiasm. He worked his way up from a single-engine Piper Tri-Pacer to a Comanche, and eventually to twin-engined Apaches and Aztecs. In 1957, he and Dorothy made their first flight from Johannesburg to Europe, navigating with nothing but National Geographic maps, a compass, and an HF radio. Somewhere over France, bad weather forced them down into a field, skidding to a halt in front of a herd of bewildered cows. Local farm workers heard the commotion and took them to the nearby count, who hosted them for a long weekend at his château—complete with feasts and a wild boar hunt.

Meanwhile, news of their safety never reached my grandmother in England, who had the RAF out scouring the Channel for wreckage. The following week, an inspector arrived from Paris and granted Mogens permission to take off—but not Dorothy, who had to find her own way to Paris and rejoin him there. Mogens’ arrival in Paris, unsurprisingly, was a disaster. He got completely lost; his HF radio was useless—no one had told him Europe had switched to VHF. He ended up landing at a military base, nearly got himself arrested, and eventually found his way to Orly airport. Needless to say, one of their first purchases in Paris was a VHF radio.

All in all, they made the trip from Johannesburg to Europe—and as far as Denmark—five or six times. I can just imagine Mogens’ pride when, on one of the last trips, he touched down at Roskilde Airport in his twin-engined Piper Aztec, with my mom, Niels, Briony, and their Afrikaans nanny, Auntie Stow, in tow. Waiting to greet them was his elder brother, Bjørn. Talk about local boy makes good.

By then, Stella Nova had become a cash machine. Between weddings, ID photos, and an endless line of black South Africans needing passbook photos, the money poured in. But for Mogens, it was never just about the money. What really thrilled him was beating the system.

South Africa, unlike his native Denmark, didn’t allow you to freely move your own money out of the country. That restriction gnawed at Mogens—and he found ways around it. At first, it was small-time: hiding Rands in the fuselage panels of his own aircraft. Then came the homemade waistcoats: gold coins sandwiched between layers of sticky wallpaper, cut to shape and worn invisibly under his jacket. Diamonds were taped inside rolled-up newspapers, casual enough to carry through customs, casual enough to drop if things got dicey.

He became so good at it that he started doing it for others too—wealthy South Africans who didn’t like the rules any more than he did. For a commission, of course. Probably not his smartest idea, as you’ll discover in a later chapter.

It wasn’t about survival. It was about the adrenaline, the thrill of getting away with it. And if a little extra cash came with the rush, all the better.

By the time I arrived in 1967, the Mogens and Dorothy story was already larger than life. Niels was 15, Briony 17. Their world was yacht holidays aboard the 85-foot Brionie (named after Briony and Niels, if you’re wondering) in Cannes every August, ski trips to Mürren, Switzerland every December—and always with a friend or two in tow. I was born into the afterglow of their prime: into a family powered by ambition, rebellion, and the unshakable belief that anything could be made possible—with enough charm, enough audacity, or, failing that, a very fast getaway.

The glory days were still burning when I arrived—but from the vantage point of adulthood, I know now the wheels were already starting to come off.