Over the years, and despite all the evidence to the contrary, I have been assured by many (intensely ignorant) people that, Kruger was ‘a freedom fighter’ who ‘resisted the British Empire’. Needless to say, to actually believe this rubbish takes...
In June 1890, HM Government had declared a Protectorate over the island of Zanzibar, with one article of the agreement stating that the British Consul would have the final say in the accession of the Sultan. When the pro-British Sultan, Hamad bin...
It was the great Mark Twain who wrote, ‘It is easier to fool people, than to convince them that they have been fooled’, and it is a quote which perfectly describes the mindset of the True Believers™ that I repeatedly lock horns with. A good...
In his 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, American science-fiction writer, Robert A. Heinlein, coined the word ‘Grok’. This has been variously described as meaning: “to understand intuitively or by empathy, to establish rapport with” or “to...
Further to the latest woke-driven faux-outrage about a Boer War Memorial in Newcastle, there was a good article on the subject in the Telegraph today: Statues aren’t in the news as much these days. A year has passed since Colston was torn...
Another day, and another attempt by the insidious forces of political-correctness to re-write British history: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/03/boer-war-memorial-firing-line-council-deems-conflict-colonialist/ It seems that a Boer War...
Ever since I started ruffling feathers by writing ‘Kruger, Kommandos and Kak’, my books have been frantically dismissed by a certain type of South African ‘academic’. Not only did I dare to challenge their cosy, self-serving myths, but I continue...
As so many people seem to consider Wiki to be the fount of all knowledge, I was interested to see this story in the Daily Telegraph...
Sir Winston Churchill famously stated his outlook as being: ‘In War, Resolution; In Defeat, Defiance; In Victory, Magnanimity; and in Peace, Good Will’. It is interesting to note the lasting impact that these very British values of ‘magnanimity...
Of all the many myths which surround the Boer War, one of the most amusing is the idea that the conflict was fought between ‘Britain and South Africa’. As ‘South Africa’ did not exist at the time, this is self-evidently...
As the last few thousand British and American troops leave Afghanistan this month, after almost 20 years, there was an interesting comment in a letter to the Telegraph: ‘the alliance would do well to reflect on the words of the former coalition...
I was recently told by one True Believer / Defender of the Myth that he would never read any of my books ‘on principle’. I asked him if that was the ‘principle of not wanting to learn anything about the Boer War’, and he...
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