LOCAL history professor and writer, Donal McCracken, recently launched a new book, An Irish diary of the South African War, which he has edited with a meaty and lively introduction.
Adams Books Musgrave was abuzz with historians, academics and writers on the evening of Wednesday, 7 August to listen to Prof McCracken speak at the launch.
Teddy Luther’s War is the saga of a young German-American who came to South Africa to fight the British, ending up with the devil-may-care Irish commando, into which he fitted with great alacrity.
Fighting (and drinking) with the retreating Irish (the Wreckers’ Corps) across the Free State, through Johannesburg (the Irish were last to leave), Pretoria and eastward, with the British and Australian cavalry at his heels, Luther made it to within a day of the Mozambique border and safety – before being killed.
But the saga does not end there. At this point, the sinister hand of British Military Intelligence surfaces.
Luther’s notebooks are taken back to London and used in the dirty propaganda war that the intelligence service waged against both the Boers and the nationalist Irish. About a century later, this was rediscovered and revealed by Prof McCracken during his research in the old War Office Library in Whitehall, London.
The book will be on sale at Adams Books.
