SOUTH AFRICAN MEMORIES (Presentation copy from the author)

Second Impression: 331 pages, frontispiece portrait, 19 plates, original red cloth gilt - worn at the corners and slightly faded, light foxing, edges uncut, a very good copy.

The presentation inscription reads 'To Mrs. Thos. Wilson, a souvenir of Jan. 1924. From the Author, Rust-en-Vrede, Muizenberg.'

Rust-en-Vrede, is the Cape Dutch revival estate designed by Herbert Baker.

Lady Wilson, sister of Winston Churchill, visited Southern Africa a number of times forming friendships with Rhodes, Jameson, etc. She was described as the 'heroine of Mafeking' and Baden-Powell paid special tribute to her optimism and courage. From Dictionary of South African Biography, volume 3, pages 847/8. ‘The Daily Mail newspaper recruited Lady Sarah after one of its correspondents, Ralph Hellawell, was arrested by the Boers as he tried to get out of the besieged town of Mafeking to send his dispatch. She was in the right place at the right time to step into the journalistic breach, having moved to Mafeking with her husband, Lt.-Col. Gordon Chesney Wilson, at the start of the war, where he was aide-de-camp to Col. Robert Baden-Powell, the commanding officer at Mafeking. Baden-Powell asked her to leave Mafeking for her own safety after the Boers threatened to storm the British garrison. This she duly did, and set off on a madcap adventure in the company of her maid, travelling through the South African countryside until she was finally captured by the enemy and returned to the town in exchange for a horse thief being held there.’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Wilson_(war_correspondent)