Here's an interesting article on Winifred and Africa. Although it ignores SR, it sheds some light in the back-stories of Sarah and Joe (the latter was partly inspired by William Ballinger):
http://extra.shu.ac.uk/wpw/middlebrow/Regan.html
I'm on a train twixt Edinburgh and Glasgow, so with very temperamental broadband, but look forward to reading at journey's end, as I've been to (post- apartheid) South Africa a number of times.
I am beginning to think of you as the SR ambassador, in a Ferrero Rocher sort of way, "Surely, Madam Ambassador, with zeese snippets you are spoiling us!"
Thank you! I suppose I am: a hybrid South Riding-Scot (half-Hull, half-Bute). And Ferrero Rochers come from my other 'magic kingdom', Montferrat, in Piedmont.
Are you up for meeting up in Glasgow at the weekend?
Here's a good piece on Winifred's friend Margaret Hodgson Ballinger. A long life and an interesting career:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Ballinger
More on her and William (a Brummie by birth, raised in Motherwell) if you scroll down here:
http://gwwgen.com/johnson/zzzg06.htm
Both lived to good ages (he died in 1974, she in 1980), but sadly, didn't see the end of apartheid.
(According to Marion Shaw's bio of Winifred, Bill had proposed to her before he married Margaret, but she turned him down because of her health. He isn't to be confused with the on-off boyfriend whom Vera Brittain pseudonymised as 'Bill', though: that man was really called Harry Pearson.)
Seingner Conrat, tot per vostr'amor chan
http://www.silverwhistle.co.uk/knightlife