The Last of the Gentlemen's Wars (1937)

Fuller's book, published nearly forty years after the events they describe, was inspired by Deneys Reitz's Commando [from the same publisher], "[who] has given us one view of the South African War, and here I give another, not so thrilling I admit, yet revealing the same spirit, that this last of our great colonial wars was a gentlemanly one, for with few exceptions, Britain [sic] and Boer fought cleanly".

Much of the book is based on the author's diaries of the time. Meals are a considerable preoccupation but, more seriously, Fuller, despite being a junior officer, developed and controlled scores of kilometres of blockhouse lines. He also writes authoritatively on "horse-mastership": while "horsemanship" was expected of him, he took full responsibility for the care of his own horse, which he called "horse-mastership", which he rated a very valuable quality.

Beautifully produced, in the typical style of this publisher's pre-Second World War books. Scarlet cloth-boards, gilt lettered to the spine, top page-edge tinted blue, plain endpapers, 304 pp of text and index + frontispiece and 11 other pp of photographs on art paper + 4 inserted maps, the last of them a 5-fold map at the back of the book.

CONDITION. There is wear, including some loss of material, to the spine, which is sunned, as are the endpapers. An attractive ex-libris label is mounted on the front paste-down. The contents, including the plates and maps, are complete, unmarked and undiscoloured, making this an attractive 80-year-old first edition copy, though without the dustjacket.