There are essentially two types of history books - those written for the general populace and those written for other historians. Brian Roberts definitely knows what he's talking about, but his dry style & lack of overarching narrative definitely makes this one of the second group. Each individual chapter works, but there's no flow between - I would pick this up as a reference if I was studying the cultural effects of the Boer War, but not for personal enjoyment.

The writing is very dry and uninteresting, in contrast with the content and what it could be.

In ‘Those Bloody Women’, Brian Roberts investigates the role of three women in the Boer War of 1899-1902, namely, Lady Sarah Wilson, youngest daughter of the 7th Duke of Marlborough, who found herself besieged at Mafeking; Johanna “Hansie” van Warmelo, an activist for the Boer cause; and Emily Hobhouse, who helped to expose the scandalous conditions in the British concentration camps where roughly 28,000 Boer women and children died as a consequence of inefficiency and neglect. The book’s title relates to Kitchener referring to Hobhouse as “that bloody woman”.

The book provides an overview of British involvement in southern Africa from 1815 but in a decidedly sketchy manner. For example, no mention is made of the Zulu threat in helping to persuade the Transvaal Boers to accept British annexation of their land in 1877, nor how the removal of that threat as a result of the Zulu War of 1879 revived their demands for independence.

There are also elementary errors. We are told, for example, that Rhodes became Prime Minister of the Cape in 1891 and that Rhodesia is now Zimbabwe, when in fact Rhodes became Cape PM in 1890 and it is only Southern Rhodesia that became Zimbabwe (Northern Rhodesia is now Zambia).

The book’s footnotes are perfunctory, failing to provide page references, whilst the bibliography has not been updated to take account of the literature that has emerged since it was first published in 1991, such as Paula Krebs’ 1992 ‘History Workshop Journal’ article on Women in the Boer War Concentration Camp Controversy or the books on Emily Hobhouse written by John Hall and Robert Eales (both 2014) or Elsabé Brits (2016).

What one has here then is a readable but somewhat dated account of three spirited women and one, moreover, in which it is sadly difficult to have full confidence in the accuracy of the text.