Writing in March 1901, Winston Churchill lamented the ongoing conflict as a ‘miserable war – unfortunate and ill-omened in its beginning, inglorious in its course, cruel and hideous in its conclusion’ (Figure 1). The Anglo-Boer War occurred amid military and technological transition. Late-19th-century imperial warfare was juxtaposed with trenches, heavy artillery and distant prisoner-of-war camps, foreshadowing the industrialised brutality of the global conflicts of the early-20th century. At its end on 31 May 1902, the conflict, which had been loftily dismissed by Fleet Street as just a ‘teatime war’, had dragged on for three years, costing more than £200m. Around 7,000 Boer combatants and 22,000 British soldiers had died (75% of the British fatalities from disease), and 28,000 Boer civilians (around 22,000 children and 4,000 women) and 14,000 Africans had…
