The Foster Gang – May, Henry John & Hamilton, Iain
Rare first edition
The Foster Gang – May, Henry John & Hamilton, Iain
Publisher: Heinemann
Date Published: 1966
Publication Place: London
First Edition: Yes
Condition: Good.
Binding: Hardcover. Some edge-wear to the boards.
Has Dust Jacket: Yes
Jacket Condition: Good-. Edge-wear to all extremities with small closed tears to the spine edges.
In the minds of many Afrikaners the South African War was merely interrupted in 1902 with the Peace of Vereeniging. Twelve years later they were ready to take to the veld again in armed protes against what they regarded as the growing subservience of Botha and Smuts to London. But the key figure, General De la Rey, the greatest and most chivalrous hero of the South African War, remained an enigma. Among the Afrikaners his moral authority was unshakeable; and he had fallen under the influence of the prophet Niklaas van Rensburg, an archaic figure who might have stepped from the Old Testament. Would his word topple the loyalist administration of Botha and Smuts, set Boer against Briton again, and alter the course of the still distant war?
As the crisis deepened, Johannesburg and it's satellite towns of the Rand were distracted from the issues of war and peace by the exploits of the gang led by William Foster, a young mining surveyor and photographer turned criminal and killer. On the very day-and almost at the very moment- that General De la Rey made his crucial decision in Pretoria, Foster and his accomplices together with his pretty young wife and their child, were flushed from their hideout in Johannesburg. The hunt was up. And the Delphic utterances of Niklaas van Rensburg were to be borne out by events- but not (for such is the irony of oracles) in the way expected by those who had drunk them in.
The General and the gangster never met; but their paths crossed in the night; and each, without knowing it, played a decisive role in the national destiny. The threads of the tangled skein have been unpicked by Henry John May and Iain Hamilton, and the result is a narrative with a plot that would be far too implausible for the most far-fetched fiction.
