THE MAN WHO KILLED KITCHENER

First edition: 429 pages, frontispiece portrait of Fritz Joubert Duquesne, illustrations, maps on backendpapers, black cloth with gilt decoration on upper cover, fore-edge uncut, front hinge weak, a good copy in the worn dust jacket now preserved in a Brodart protector.

Loosely inserted is an article extracted from the Sunday Times Lifestyle Magazine dated August 30 1998: Who killed Kitchener

Benbow (Colin) Boer prisoners of war in Bermuda: See 'Appendix "C", Fritz Duquesne, The Man And The Myth: An Interim Report'. Duquesne was one of the most remarkable and controversial figures ever produced by South Africa. Claiming to be the nephew of General Piet Joubert he was captured by the British forces during the Boer War and he made his escape from Bermuda in June 1902. He lived abroad for the rest of his life, mainly in America. He became a fanatical opponent of British Imperialism and during the First World War operated as a secret agent for German Naval Intelligence. He claimed to have transmitted the precise details of Lord Kitchener's last voyage to German Intelligence, resulting in the torpedoing of the ship and Kitchener's death. Some of his claims were undeniably valid, for in 1919 he escaped from the hospital of Bellevue Prison in New York, while awaiting extradition to Britain on a charge of 'murder on the high seas'. The sensational claims made here have yet to be verified but this has not detracted in the least from the great fame of this book. Duquesne died in New York in 1956, shortly after being released from 13 years imprisonment in that country.