Product Description

The war declared by the Boers on 11 October 1899 gave the British, as Kipling said, "no end of a lesson". It proved to be the longest, the costliest, the bloodiest and the most humiliating campaign that Britain fought between 1815 and 1914. Thomas Pakenham has written a full-scale history of the war, based on first-hand and largely unpublished sources ranging from the private papers of the leading protagonists to the recollections of survivors from both sides.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28556 in Books
• Published on: 1991-10-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

Review
'Not only a magnum opus, it is a conclusive work ... Enjoyable as well as massively impressive' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Hypnotically readable ... A tremendous feat of research ... this is grand-scale history with heroes and villains ... hot, impassioned work, and I recommend it wholeheartedly' NEWSWEEK 'This is a wonderful book: brilliantly written ... the reader turns each page with increasing fascination and admiration' A.J.P. TAYLOR

About the Author
Thomas Pakenham is the author of The Mountains of Rasselas, The Year of Liberty, The Scramble for Africa, Meetings with Remarkable Trees and Remarkable Trees of the World. He divides his time between London and Ireland. He is married to the writer Valerie Pakenham and they have four children.

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest history books ever written?
At first the 580 or so pages on a rather forgotten subject could dissuade most people from reading it. This was almost the effect it had on me when I first saw the book many years ago but after the first chapter I realised that I was reading a unique and very special book. Pakenham manages to cover every aspect of the conflict without ever getting bogged down in tedium and maintains a lively pace throughout. He describes clearly the political and economic causes of the war from every perspective and the battle scenes are so minutely recounted that the reader feels he is actually present. But Pakenham, more importantly, deals with the unpalatable truths: that the British Government allowed itself to be dragged into a conflict by war mongers like Milne and Rhodes who were motivated by greed and financial gain, the concentration camps which were designed to round up the Afrikaaner families that supposedly supported the Boers were so badly organised that they caused thousands of deaths more through incompetence than by design, how the blacks were actively mistreated by the boers and totally ignored by the British during the conflict and after it in any future political settlement, how the British Army lived up to the old adage of "lions lead by donkeys". Pakenham is also willing to explode a few old myths: that Redvers Buller was solely to blame for the inital failures of the British Army during the beginning of the conflict, that Lord Roberts was the saviour afterwards and that the Boers were expert marksmen. In the end the book succeeds because the author tells the story from a deeply moving human perspective; it reads like a wonderful novel without ever losing sight that it is an historical document. My only criticism is that it could do with more photographs and illustrations (this was, after all, one of the first ever conflicts to be extensively filmed and photographed).

A wonderful account of a neglected conflict
Thomas Pakenham succeeds in bringing to life the causes and course of the Boer War through a prodigious mixture of spotless, in-depth research, and a writing style that compels the reader to turn the page and discover the latest twist in a conflict that shook the British Army to its foundations. The Boer War has, in Britain, been overshadowed by the two World Wars which followed, but this book will prove of particular interest to students of the Great War, since many of the leading soldiers of that war took part, with varying degrees of success, in the Boer War -soldiers such as French, Haig, Rawlinson and Hamilton. Their experiences in the Boer War are illuminating in the light of their later actions in France and beyond a generation later. A must-read for any student of the late Victorian British army, but also a wonderfully interesting book that appeals to the discerning reader.

Best book I've read on the Boer War
I am a collector of British military medals with a particular interest in the Boer War and the First World War. As a result I have read many books on about these wars and I can honestly say that this book is the best one I have ever read concerning the Boer War of 1899 to 1902.

The author takes an in depth look at the causes of the war in both a detailed and refreshingly modern analytic way not found in previous works. He then moves on and examines the various phases of the war from the large set piece battles to the guerrila war that followed as well as the aftermath.

However, what is really pleasing about this book is the way it is written being more akin to a novel than a history textbook. The result is a highly readble text with very little dry bits that often tire the reader when he or she embarks on reading a book as large as this one.

If you want one good general history of the Boer War then this is the one to buy. It will suit those who wish to learn more about the politics of the war as well as those who have a keen interest in the military tatics used.

In short this really is a first class book which shlould be read by anyone with an interest in this conflict.