Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Some tanning wear and marking due to age. Year 1966. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

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About the book >.>.> General De la Rey has been described as perhaps the only man of original genius to emerge on either side in the Anglo-Boer War one of nature’s gentlemen a remarkably fine fellow the greatest natural soldier to come out of So South Africa with a face un-equalled for antique patriarchal dig-nity a warrior saint a lion a king-these have been the assessments made by some famous names. Although referred to in hundreds of books this is the first biography of the great Boer General. Perhaps the subject was too vast the material too scattered the story of his life too close to men who were still living and too strange and fantastic in its later phases to be satisfactorily dealt with. Johannes Meintjes drawing on a vast mass of unpublished material has tackled the whole De la Rey story from the pioneering days of his childhood in the Free State and the Transvaal through the First War of Independence and on to the Boer War featuring the great battles of Modder River Magersfontein the campaign in the Western Transvaal up to Tweebosch and the Treaty of Vereeniging the Convention at Dur-ban and the First World War ending with the tremendous climax of 15 September 1914 when De la Rey was shot dead on the eve of the Rebellion. In this biography we are brought close to a man of power and passion of warmth and humour through whose life strange forces moved-such as the weird Prophet Van Rens-burg who passed like a godly mes senger in an ancient Greek tragedy through the later phases of De la Rey’s life Patriotism and humour ag gression guilt and mystery feature in the story of the magnificent De la Rey striding the South African land scape in a lonely digmty towards his ultimate destiny. (SP)