Nelson Mandela is widely considered to be one of the most inspiring and iconic figures of our age. Now, after a lifetime of taking pen to paper to record thoughts and events, hardships and victories, he has opened his personal archive, which offers an unprecedented insight into his remarkable life and offers a unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader. Journals kept on the run during the anti-apartheid struggle of the early 1960s; diaries and draft letters written in Robben Island and other South African prisons during his twenty-seven years of incarceration; notebooks from the post-apartheid transition; private recorded conversations; speeches and correspondence written during his presidency, a historic collection of documents archived at the Nelson Mandela Foundation is brought together into this narrative. An intimate journey from Mandela's first stirrings of political consciousness to his galvanizing role on the world stage, this biography illuminates a heroic life forged on the front lines of the struggle for freedom and justice. It allows, for the first time, insight into the human side of the icon.