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Rags of Glory
Novel of the Second Boer War (1899-1902), the "Civil War" of South Africa, told from both the English and Dutch Boer viewpoint.
628 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1962
About the author
Stuart Cloete
62 books9 followersStuart Cloete was born in France in 1897 to a Scottish mother and South African father. (His ancestors had come from Holland with Jan Van Riebeck to establish a settlement for the Dutch East India Company).
He remembered his early years in Paris with nostalgia, but the ideal was shattered when he began his schooling in France and England. He never excelled academically and - in his own words - ‘learnt almost nothing'.
At the age of 17 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant (at the beginning of the First World War in 1914) into the Ninth King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, before later transferring to the Coldstream Guards. While nearly all of his early fellow officers and friends died, he survived four years of fighting in France and, for a while, was treated like a living lucky charm by the troops. He was seriously injured twice, and experienced amnesia induced by ‘shell-shock' which was largely left untreated. In a mental hospital in London, he met his first wife, a volunteer nurse, Eileen Horsman, and fell in love, even inducing a second breakdown with aspirin and whisky so he could see her again.
After recuperating in France, Cloete acted on his compulsion to identify with the land of his ancestors. He became a successful farmer in the Transvaal in South Africa. But as soon as he had established himself and achieved his aims he became restless again and began pondering a life as a writer. His eighteen year marriage floundered through growing incompatibility and Cloete's infidelity.
He sold up and left for England to become an author, leaving Eileen behind in South Africa. He recalled the decision to become a writer as the biggest gamble of his life. But, as it turned out, he hit the jackpot with his first novel, Turning Wheels, published in 1937. It sold more than two million copies, although it was banned in South Africa where it scandalized the authorities with its commentary on the Great Trek and a mixed-race relationship. Cloete was a prolific writer and went on to complete 14 novels and at least eight volumes of short stories.
On the way to America to promote Turning Wheels, Cloete met Tiny ( Mildred Elizabeth West) who later became his second wife. It was not love at first sight but eventually he realized he had found a soul mate. Tiny enjoyed the fruits of his success as a highly acclaimed writer and was his faithful companion until his death in Cape Town in 1976.
Cloete lived through a period of unprecedented upheavals and in his autobiography, published in the early 70s, he pondered whether ‘progress' was in fact a misnomer; it had ushered in colorless uniformity and even the threat of nuclear war. He also reflected on the chapters of his vagabond, eventful and, in his view, incredibly lucky life. He left behind no children.
He remembered his early years in Paris with nostalgia, but the ideal was shattered when he began his schooling in France and England. He never excelled academically and - in his own words - ‘learnt almost nothing'.
At the age of 17 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant (at the beginning of the First World War in 1914) into the Ninth King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, before later transferring to the Coldstream Guards. While nearly all of his early fellow officers and friends died, he survived four years of fighting in France and, for a while, was treated like a living lucky charm by the troops. He was seriously injured twice, and experienced amnesia induced by ‘shell-shock' which was largely left untreated. In a mental hospital in London, he met his first wife, a volunteer nurse, Eileen Horsman, and fell in love, even inducing a second breakdown with aspirin and whisky so he could see her again.
After recuperating in France, Cloete acted on his compulsion to identify with the land of his ancestors. He became a successful farmer in the Transvaal in South Africa. But as soon as he had established himself and achieved his aims he became restless again and began pondering a life as a writer. His eighteen year marriage floundered through growing incompatibility and Cloete's infidelity.
He sold up and left for England to become an author, leaving Eileen behind in South Africa. He recalled the decision to become a writer as the biggest gamble of his life. But, as it turned out, he hit the jackpot with his first novel, Turning Wheels, published in 1937. It sold more than two million copies, although it was banned in South Africa where it scandalized the authorities with its commentary on the Great Trek and a mixed-race relationship. Cloete was a prolific writer and went on to complete 14 novels and at least eight volumes of short stories.
On the way to America to promote Turning Wheels, Cloete met Tiny ( Mildred Elizabeth West) who later became his second wife. It was not love at first sight but eventually he realized he had found a soul mate. Tiny enjoyed the fruits of his success as a highly acclaimed writer and was his faithful companion until his death in Cape Town in 1976.
Cloete lived through a period of unprecedented upheavals and in his autobiography, published in the early 70s, he pondered whether ‘progress' was in fact a misnomer; it had ushered in colorless uniformity and even the threat of nuclear war. He also reflected on the chapters of his vagabond, eventful and, in his view, incredibly lucky life. He left behind no children.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 15, 2023
An epic novel set during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). It's a curious thing that this particular war is treated by so many as an 19th Century event that has no connection to the modern world. As if it was just a black & white Victorian melodrama film short playing in a vaudeville house accompanied by a live piano soundtrack.
Wholly inaccurate in my opinion. This war was all too "modern". Over 40,000 black Africans and Boer civilians died from disease and malnutrition in British concentration camps. Both the Boers and the British engaged in "scorched earth" tactics, and it was a harbinger for what is now a common type of warfare, guerilla warfare. It showed that the days of the mounted cavalry were over, but that wouldn't be finalized until World War I (1914-1918). It also demonstrated that troops in defensive positions with modern repeating rifles and machine-guns could inflict horrific losses on an attacking force. Incidentally this fact was first established thirty-five years earlier in the American Civil War (1860-1865) followed by the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) and then afterwards in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), but the lesson wouldn't sink in for another twelve years with World War One.
It almost brought the German Empire into the war on the side of the Boers, and it could be argued was the beginning of the end of the British Empire. It convinced the British government that "going it alone" (non-alignment) wasn't viable and helped ensure that that England and France were allied before WWI started. One can also contend that Winston Churchill's capture and escape from the Boers kick started his political career which culminated as the Prime Minister of England during World War II.
Finally, over 70,000 people died during the war and in the end the Boers (many of them proudly considered themselves to be the so-called "bitterenders") gained control of the national government of South Africa in 1948 and made apartheid the law of the land. A way of life that was in effect until the 1990s! The repercussions from the Apartheid Era are still being dealt with not only in Africa, but throughout the world.
Dismissing the Second Boer War as a dusty old war of no modern significance is historical myopia at it's finest.
Stuart Cloete wrote 14 novels during his lifetime. He was descended from the Boers on his paternal grandfather's side. The Cloete family had opted to stay in Cape Colony under British rule and did not join the "Great Trek" eastward to escape British administration. As a result, the family was Angelized and Stuart Cloete had a thoroughly upper-class British upbringing. He attended Lancing College (a public school which means private and expensive) and then enrolled in the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1914 at the age of seventeen. He would serve as an infantry officer in France during World War One and would survive that experience. After the war he moved to South Africa and took up farming (evidently, he had always felt an affinity for South Africa and was interested in the history of the Boers) and was successful, but he left the farm and his wife in the Thirties to embark on his second career as a writer. Many of his novels were historical novels set in the 19th century in South Africa and focused on the Boers. Rags of Glory would definitely have to be classified as Cloete's Magnum Opus. He took thirteen years to write it (1950-1963). I dare say it was his passion project made even sweeter by becoming a best seller. His writing reminds me of another well known novelist from that corner of the world the late Wilbur Smith. Both men wrote hefty potboilers that focused on their part of Africa, both enjoyed strong sales, and both have aspects in their writing that can stir some controversy.
In many aspects Rags of Glory is a great read. It's an epic story with a large cast of characters, both British and Boer civilians and soldiers. I can state with no reservations that Cloete did his research, and it comes through in ever page. There is even an extensive bibliography. Not only did he research the war and the politics, but fashion, how homes functioned, domestic staffs, horses, and prostitution in Victorian England. Cloete makes the time period come alive. His writing isn't complicated, but it isn't pulp fiction either. It's very accessible and engrossing. An excellent example of what literary snobs would have called "middle-brow writing" back when this book was published. The story has romance, action, tragedy as well as political and social observations. You will feel that you've taken a time machine to the turn of the (previous) century. It's all blended together quite seamlessly and doesn't have any weak points...well almost none.
Stuart Cloete began writing this novel when he was in his early Fifties. He had lived through decades of upheaval, and he wasn't a big fan of the modern world. He basically stated this in his autobiography published in the early Seventies. Though he was only two years old when the war began there is a strong air of nostalgia in the story. Nostalgia for a time that seemed to be more stable and people's roles more defined (ironically many now look back on the Fifties that way). It's the very thing that gives the novel such a strong sense of time and place, but it's also a very different world from the one I and others now live in. It's so skillfully constructed as to make the world of late Victorian England seem very attractive - as long as one lived at a certain level.
I need to stress this isn't a "modern" sensibility. The musings of a middle-aged snowflake if you like. When famed movie producer Albert R. Broccoli was attempting to get the novel made into a movie, he lobbied the great David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, A Passage to India) to direct it. Evidently Lean considered it, but eventually decided to give it a pass. He described the novel as "very good in an awful sort of way". This would have been in the Sixties and Lean in his fifties at the time. Hardly the critique of a twenty something in 2022. It's also a very pithy observation which leaves my rather windy review in the dirt, but what one works with what one has.
The book isn't racist, but black Africans are supporting characters at best. There is a paternal attitude towards them which will likely be uncomfortable to most modern readers. Women are important, but in the end, they exist to support their men, care for the household, bear the children and have sex of course. By the standards of 2022 it's sexist, but perhaps not so much in the early sixties. Additionally, it could be argued that it's closer to the attitudes of the time period giving the story just that much more "truthfulness". Finally, the book was banned in South Africa for many years because it was considered to be unflattering in its portrayal of the Boers. Just makes things all that more god Damm complicated doesn't it. I just don't know what to say.
In the end if you're curious about the dusty old Boer War, but just don't have the energy to tackle a hefty historical work like The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham then Rags of Glory might be worth a read. You'll learn a little about an event that isn't disconnected from our modern world and possibly have a goodtime as well. It might be a guilty pleasure though.
Wholly inaccurate in my opinion. This war was all too "modern". Over 40,000 black Africans and Boer civilians died from disease and malnutrition in British concentration camps. Both the Boers and the British engaged in "scorched earth" tactics, and it was a harbinger for what is now a common type of warfare, guerilla warfare. It showed that the days of the mounted cavalry were over, but that wouldn't be finalized until World War I (1914-1918). It also demonstrated that troops in defensive positions with modern repeating rifles and machine-guns could inflict horrific losses on an attacking force. Incidentally this fact was first established thirty-five years earlier in the American Civil War (1860-1865) followed by the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878) and then afterwards in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), but the lesson wouldn't sink in for another twelve years with World War One.
It almost brought the German Empire into the war on the side of the Boers, and it could be argued was the beginning of the end of the British Empire. It convinced the British government that "going it alone" (non-alignment) wasn't viable and helped ensure that that England and France were allied before WWI started. One can also contend that Winston Churchill's capture and escape from the Boers kick started his political career which culminated as the Prime Minister of England during World War II.
Finally, over 70,000 people died during the war and in the end the Boers (many of them proudly considered themselves to be the so-called "bitterenders") gained control of the national government of South Africa in 1948 and made apartheid the law of the land. A way of life that was in effect until the 1990s! The repercussions from the Apartheid Era are still being dealt with not only in Africa, but throughout the world.
Dismissing the Second Boer War as a dusty old war of no modern significance is historical myopia at it's finest.
Stuart Cloete wrote 14 novels during his lifetime. He was descended from the Boers on his paternal grandfather's side. The Cloete family had opted to stay in Cape Colony under British rule and did not join the "Great Trek" eastward to escape British administration. As a result, the family was Angelized and Stuart Cloete had a thoroughly upper-class British upbringing. He attended Lancing College (a public school which means private and expensive) and then enrolled in the Royal Military College, Sandhurst in 1914 at the age of seventeen. He would serve as an infantry officer in France during World War One and would survive that experience. After the war he moved to South Africa and took up farming (evidently, he had always felt an affinity for South Africa and was interested in the history of the Boers) and was successful, but he left the farm and his wife in the Thirties to embark on his second career as a writer. Many of his novels were historical novels set in the 19th century in South Africa and focused on the Boers. Rags of Glory would definitely have to be classified as Cloete's Magnum Opus. He took thirteen years to write it (1950-1963). I dare say it was his passion project made even sweeter by becoming a best seller. His writing reminds me of another well known novelist from that corner of the world the late Wilbur Smith. Both men wrote hefty potboilers that focused on their part of Africa, both enjoyed strong sales, and both have aspects in their writing that can stir some controversy.
In many aspects Rags of Glory is a great read. It's an epic story with a large cast of characters, both British and Boer civilians and soldiers. I can state with no reservations that Cloete did his research, and it comes through in ever page. There is even an extensive bibliography. Not only did he research the war and the politics, but fashion, how homes functioned, domestic staffs, horses, and prostitution in Victorian England. Cloete makes the time period come alive. His writing isn't complicated, but it isn't pulp fiction either. It's very accessible and engrossing. An excellent example of what literary snobs would have called "middle-brow writing" back when this book was published. The story has romance, action, tragedy as well as political and social observations. You will feel that you've taken a time machine to the turn of the (previous) century. It's all blended together quite seamlessly and doesn't have any weak points...well almost none.
Stuart Cloete began writing this novel when he was in his early Fifties. He had lived through decades of upheaval, and he wasn't a big fan of the modern world. He basically stated this in his autobiography published in the early Seventies. Though he was only two years old when the war began there is a strong air of nostalgia in the story. Nostalgia for a time that seemed to be more stable and people's roles more defined (ironically many now look back on the Fifties that way). It's the very thing that gives the novel such a strong sense of time and place, but it's also a very different world from the one I and others now live in. It's so skillfully constructed as to make the world of late Victorian England seem very attractive - as long as one lived at a certain level.
I need to stress this isn't a "modern" sensibility. The musings of a middle-aged snowflake if you like. When famed movie producer Albert R. Broccoli was attempting to get the novel made into a movie, he lobbied the great David Lean (Lawrence of Arabia, A Passage to India) to direct it. Evidently Lean considered it, but eventually decided to give it a pass. He described the novel as "very good in an awful sort of way". This would have been in the Sixties and Lean in his fifties at the time. Hardly the critique of a twenty something in 2022. It's also a very pithy observation which leaves my rather windy review in the dirt, but what one works with what one has.
The book isn't racist, but black Africans are supporting characters at best. There is a paternal attitude towards them which will likely be uncomfortable to most modern readers. Women are important, but in the end, they exist to support their men, care for the household, bear the children and have sex of course. By the standards of 2022 it's sexist, but perhaps not so much in the early sixties. Additionally, it could be argued that it's closer to the attitudes of the time period giving the story just that much more "truthfulness". Finally, the book was banned in South Africa for many years because it was considered to be unflattering in its portrayal of the Boers. Just makes things all that more god Damm complicated doesn't it. I just don't know what to say.
In the end if you're curious about the dusty old Boer War, but just don't have the energy to tackle a hefty historical work like The Boer War by Thomas Pakenham then Rags of Glory might be worth a read. You'll learn a little about an event that isn't disconnected from our modern world and possibly have a goodtime as well. It might be a guilty pleasure though.
November 29, 2020
Although this book, like its companion piece "The Fiercest Heart" centers upon the Boer War, surely a dated episode of a long-gone world, the story still resonates and the personalities of the main protagonists come to the fore. The London parts of the story, the horrors of the white-slavery business add a whole new dimension. Elsie, the "rescued" prostitute and Betty the maid are perhaps a bit overly idealistically drawn and the revenge taken by Betty's brothers is probably a little too pat, but satisfying to read nonetheless.
Cloete's narrative style is uncomplicated, with no literary flourishes, no great social "message" and no psychological soul-searching. He just tells a good story in plain language. Altogether, an easy, enjoyable read.
Cloete's narrative style is uncomplicated, with no literary flourishes, no great social "message" and no psychological soul-searching. He just tells a good story in plain language. Altogether, an easy, enjoyable read.
April 11, 2013
This is a marvelous book that I discovered many years ago, probably as a library book. Then, I found it at a thrift store. A most lucky find, as it was out of print. I recommend this book to anyone -- it is historically accurate and has a most marvelous story-line(s).
February 14, 2013
Rags of Glory is the story of Boer War in South Africa. It is told by the author who lived through the period. It is the story of a South African family and a British officer and you see the war from both sides. It is also several love stories mixed in with the war and it's consequences. One of the aspects that fascinated me was the details of the period, the morals and social aspects of the two societies. Huge forces were changing the world and the British Empire at the turn of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Yet many of the behaviors had not changed but were being forced on the characters. It is the story of a British calvary Captain and the young prostitute that he loves and rescues from a brothel. She is one of the unique characters you will ever experience in your reading. A girl who had been used since childhood yet retained an innocence that breaks all the barriers of anyone who meets her. It is also the story of a young Boer boy who goes off to war a boy and returns a man and the young woman he meets and falls in love with. The book is filled with unique characters and history that I was certainly unaware of happening. A gem if you can find it.
May 26, 2021
This novel provides an excellent history of the Boer War of 1899-1902. It reads almost like an epic, but covers just over two years. Fictional characters with multiple viewpoints from both sides of the conflict present their stories, while real-life participants in the war provide a historical setting. I didn’t know much about the Boer War, but I feel the author covered it well, if slightly biased on the side of the Boers. I liked most of the multitude of characters, especially the young Boetie who goes off to war when only 16, and the ex-prostitute Elsie, desperately in love with her English cavalryman. Although the value of books like this are in the details of the history of the period, I thought the details a bit too excessive for my taste, sometimes reading more like an academic piece than a novel, but only for a number of pages at a time. Then after all this detail the ending seemed rushed to me. Yet the story and characters were solid. The author had clearly done his research and I learned a lot. I was impressed by the bravery of the Boers and the sheer power in numbers of the English, as well as clear parallels between the Boer War and our own Civil War. Definitely worth reading – all 600+ pages of it!
March 22, 2019
Cloete wrote this book during the apartheid era, and it was banned by the SA government. On the one hand, I understand why--the Boers are not portrayed as saints. On the other hand, read through modern eyes, the short shrift Cloete gives to African peoples, the insensitive manner in which they are described, the paternalistic attitude towards blacks that is found between the lines--and their general absence from the story of the Boer War, makes this a profoundly disturbing book. I read it as part of my research for a book I'm writing, and in that way this book was valuable for laying out some of the realities of the Boer War, and in helping describe the social and geographic background. I wouldn't recommend this book for enjoyable reading for fun.
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May 13, 2024The first part was a very good historical novel with character development of an extensive cast and detailed build up and beginning of the war. The next part devolved into a historical description of the war and its strategies. The leaders and generals became more of the characters and the previously developed characters became a support staff. The last part of the book was a summing up of the character denouements. Still a very good book in terms of opening up a Pandora's box of the Second Boer War which is much neglected in history and historical fiction.
October 6, 2021
Simple enough, yet complex in its multiple storylines and meticulous research of the Boer War, I am glad to have read it!
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October 19, 2009Rags of glory by Stuart Cloete (1963), 1st ed
March 31, 2010
I wwas a yong mother when I read Stuart Cloete's books about South Africa and the Boer wars. They brought me to a different world and made me appreciate the good life I had.
September 29, 2010
Schitterend boek dat de gruwel van de eerste wereldoorlog weergeeft.
January 5, 2013
c1963. Full name = Edward Fairly Stuart Graham Cloete (1897-1976)
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews