Tale of
a revolutionary-spirited young Irish woman in the Anglo Boer War makes for
riveting reading. (Review by Caroline Smart)
The Anglo Boer war has been a subject of
intense interest and fascination throughout most of author Neville Herrington’s
life. His maternal grandfather and great grandfather were both Boer fighters,
the latter spent time as a prisoner-of-war at Diyatilawa camp in Ceylon (Sri
Lanka), while his paternal grandfather and his brother rode with the Cape
colonial mounted regiment, Nesbitt's Horse.
During the Anglo Boer war, his maternal
grandmother, Gezina McKenny (nee Groenewald), was incarcerated in a British
concentration camp at the age of 15 together with her mother and siblings.
A former senior lecturer at the University
of Natal (now UKZN), Herrington has drawn on this background to produce several
documentaries on the Anglo Boer war for broadcast television channels
nationally and internationally as well as a number of books.
The
Irish Boer Woman is the second volume of his Brigid
O'Meara trilogy – the first being England
Wants Your Gold - which follows the life of an adventurous young Irish music
hall singer who is drawn into the intrigues and violence of the Jameson Raid of
1895.
In The
Irish Boer Woman, Herrington moves on to the Anglo Boer War and the events
that befall the revolutionary-spirited Brigid O’Meara who gets caught up in a
clash of cultures and worldviews. She becomes engaged to a British Uitlander who
is facing charges of high treason for smuggling weapons into the Transvaal
Republic.
Herrington vividly describes the conditions
in the camps and the hostilities on both warring sides as well as Kitchener’s
Scorched Earth Policy which sees the devastation of the burning of farms of
Boer supporters and destruction of their livestock.
The
Irish Boer Woman would make for a very dramatic
movie. As Herrington says, his grandmother “would have wanted the thousands of
women and children who died in those camps to be remembered.”
Published by Tekweni Productions, The Irish Boer Woman is exceeding all
expectations of sales in bookshops throughout the country, including Exclusive
Books outlets at two international airports. ISBN/EAN13: 1533494622 /
9781533494627
Both England
Wants Your Gold and The Irish Boer
Woman are available in bookshops around the country including Adams,
Musgrave and Exclusive Books. They are also available on Amazon Books and
Amazon Kindle.
Herrington’s latest book Growing up in White South Africa is described
as a romping journey through the adventures of post-war youth searching for
self-identity in a rapidly changing world and can be read on Amazon Kindle. –
Caroline Smart
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