The Boer War (English Edition)

'This is a wonderful book: brilliantly written ... the reader turns each page with increasing fascination and admiration' A.J.P. Taylor

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Thomas Pakenham's narrative is based on first-hand and largely unpublished sources ranging from the private papers of the leading protagonists to the recollections of survivors from both sides. Mammoth in scope and scholarship, as vivid, fast-moving and breathtakingly compelling as the finest fiction. The Boer War is the definitive account of this extraordinary conflict - a war precipitated by greed and marked by almost inconcievable blundering and brutalities...and whose shattering repercussions can be felt to this very day.