The Boer War - Thomas Pakenham
The Boer War (Collectible First Edition Hardcover)
The Definitive Masterwork on the Anglo-Boer Conflict, Exposing Imperial Blunders, Gold-Bug Diplomacy, and the Human Cost of the Veld Campaign
Bibliographic Specifications
- Title: The Boer War
- Author: Thomas Pakenham
- Publisher: Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd, London
- Publication Date: 1979
- ISBN-10: 029777395X
- ISBN-13: 9780297773955
- Edition Details: Second Impression 1979 (Hardcover).
- Binding: Original publisher's premium cloth boards with gilt-titled spine, complete with original illustrated dust jacket.
- Physical Format: Royal Octavo (8vo), xix, 659 pages. Lavishly enhanced with 16 pages of historical photographic plates, extensive archival battlefield maps, comprehensive source notes, and an authoritative index.
- Language: English
Official Condition Report
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The Book: Very Good Plus (VG+)
o Exterior / Boards: The original publisher's cloth-bound boards are square, crisp, and robustly structured. The spine remains entirely undamaged, uncreased, and retains its bright, unblemished structural integrity. The edges are remarkably flat and free from deep bumping.
o Interior: The internal text block is clean, intact, and well-maintained. The interior pages, historical charts, and photographic inserts are crisp and completely free of user highlighting, ink annotations, library stamps, or common dealer marks, demonstrating exceptional archival care.
o Provenance: A clean, highly collectible copy that has been carefully looked after and preserved by its prior owner. -
The Dust Jacket: Very Good (VG)
o Condition: The original illustrated paper dust jacket remains sound and structurally whole, exhibiting only limited signs of standard shelf wear and tear along the edges. The visual imagery and spine lettering are clean and bright. It has been immediately enhanced and safely housed inside a protective Cellophane cover to prevent future handling wear and lock in its investment value. [1]
Synopsis & Historical Value
The war declared by the Boers on 11 October 1899 gave the British, as Kipling famously observed, "no end of a lesson." It proved to be the longest, the costliest, the bloodiest, and the most humiliating campaign that Great Britain fought between 1815 and 1914. In this definitive volume, Thomas Pakenham has written a brilliant, full-scale masterpiece of the war, based on years of exhaustive research using first-hand and largely unpublished source materials. His narrative spans a sweeping historical goldmine ranging from the private papers of the leading protagonists to the long-hidden letters of British Commander-in-Chief Sir Redvers Buller, and personal diaries of frontline soldiers. Pakenham radically re-evaluates the conflict, exposing the calculated role of the Rand "gold-bug" millionaires in precipitating the outbreak, detailing the staggering strategic blunders of Imperial generals, and highlighting the severe plight of over 100,000 black Africans who served both sides. It tracks how the Boers ultimately lost the military war but won the long-term political peace—making this landmark first printing a critical cornerstone for any collector of rare Africana and military history.
The war declared by the Boers on 11 October 1899 gave the British, as Kipling famously observed, "no end of a lesson." It proved to be the longest, the costliest, the bloodiest, and the most humiliating campaign that Great Britain fought between 1815 and 1914. In this definitive volume, Thomas Pakenham has written a brilliant, full-scale masterpiece of the war, based on years of exhaustive research using first-hand and largely unpublished source materials. His narrative spans a sweeping historical goldmine ranging from the private papers of the leading protagonists to the long-hidden letters of British Commander-in-Chief Sir Redvers Buller, and personal diaries of frontline soldiers. Pakenham radically re-evaluates the conflict, exposing the calculated role of the Rand "gold-bug" millionaires in precipitating the outbreak, detailing the staggering strategic blunders of Imperial generals, and highlighting the severe plight of over 100,000 black Africans who served both sides. It tracks how the Boers ultimately lost the military war but won the long-term political peace—making this landmark first printing a critical cornerstone for any collector of rare Africana and military history.
Author Profile: Thomas Pakenham
Thomas Pakenham (born 1933) is an acclaimed British historian, arborist, and award-winning author celebrated for his monumental, narrative-driven historical non-fiction. Educated at Belvedere College and New College, Oxford, Pakenham spent years travelling through South Africa researching original regional documents and conducting direct oral recordings with over fifty survivors of the conflict. His landmark titles, including The Boer War and his equally famous The Scramble for Africa, have been universally lauded by academics for combining meticulous primary archival documentation with a prose style that flows as vividly and dynamically as a novel.
Thomas Pakenham (born 1933) is an acclaimed British historian, arborist, and award-winning author celebrated for his monumental, narrative-driven historical non-fiction. Educated at Belvedere College and New College, Oxford, Pakenham spent years travelling through South Africa researching original regional documents and conducting direct oral recordings with over fifty survivors of the conflict. His landmark titles, including The Boer War and his equally famous The Scramble for Africa, have been universally lauded by academics for combining meticulous primary archival documentation with a prose style that flows as vividly and dynamically as a novel.
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