Graphic and authoritative account of the abortive raid on Paul Kruger's Transvaal Republic carried out by Dr. Leander Starr Jameson and his Rhodesian and Bechuanaland policemen over the New Year weekend of 1895-96. The raid had profound and far-reaching repercussions in both Britain and southern Africa: it toppled Cecil Rhodes from his seat of power; it embittered relations between British and Dutch in all four States of South Africa and was a contributory cause of the Anglo-Boer War; it was a factor in the outbreak of the Matabele Rebellion in Rhodesia, and it even had political repercussions in the countries north of the Limpopo some fifty years later. The Raid aroused intense partisan feelings on both sides of the language barrier and much was written on the subject at the time and in subsequent years. The great merit of Hugh Marshall Hole's book, however, is that it is by a man who knew Jameson personally, had worked with him in the intimate capacity of private secretary and who was well aware of Jameson's weaknesses as well as his strengths. And Hole wrote the book, not in the heat of post-Raid controversy, but more than thirty years later, when he was able to view events dispassionately. Hugh Marshall Hole was an efficient civil servant, a man of wide interests and considerable culture. He had a keen and observant mind and the gift of lucid expression.

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