Botha, Smuts and South Africa (Hardcover) - Williams, Basil

Williams served in the Second Boer War, where one of his companions was Erskine Childers, of whom he later wrote a memoir. Williams came back to the UK briefly, then returned to South Africa as a civilian, in the service of Lord Milner. He also worked as an assistant to Lionel Curtis, the town clerk of Johannesburg. Williams had already made an impression as an academic, with a series of articles on Sir Robert Walpole's foreign policy in The English Historical Review (19001). He became Kingsford Professor of History at McGill University in 1921, and then professor of History at Edinburgh University from 1925 to 1937 when he retired. In 1935 he was elected a fellow of the British Academy. He wrote biographies of Pitt the Elder (The Life of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, 1913), and Stanhope (1932), Carteret and Newcastle (1943). He retained his interest in South Africa, and this became a secondary sphere of historical interest. In 1946 he produced a book Botha, Smuts and South Africa for the Teach Yourself History series.

Hardcover. English. Hodder & Stoughton. 1946 First Edition. 216 pp with maps as endpapers. Good in grey cloth, no dw. Book No: 2506420