Sword: D-Day Trial by Battle
Max Hastings, Sword: D-Day Trial by Battle (London: William Collins, 2025) D-DAY ‒ Operation Neptune followed by the start of Operation Overlord and final nail in the coffin of Nazi Germany ‒ was a triumph […]
From The Thornveld
There is the high veld, the middle veld, the low veld, the bush veld, and now thoughts from the thorn veld,
Max Hastings, Sword: D-Day Trial by Battle (London: William Collins, 2025) D-DAY ‒ Operation Neptune followed by the start of Operation Overlord and final nail in the coffin of Nazi Germany ‒ was a triumph […]
THE EARLY 1990s were a time of acute instability in South Africa; but also of great hope. Structural change was yet to start, but many of the apartheid regime’s proscriptions, such as censorship, were falling […]
Karin Mitchell, The High Treason Club: The Boeremag on Trial (Cape Town: Penguin, 2025) THE TRIAL lasted nine years, occupied 1 280 court days, involved over 200 witnesses and produced a transcript of 60 000 pages. Twenty-three […]
Ted Botha, Hollywood on the Veld: When Movie Mayhem Gripped the City of Gold (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 2025) RARELY can the central character of a book appear so elusive. The American Isidore William Schlesinger (IW) […]
THURSDAY 26 June marks the seventieth anniversary of the adoption of the Freedom Charter at Kliptown in 1955. A document about which there has been much debate, it is undoubtedly one of the most inspirational […]
Ronnie Kasrils and Fidelis Hove (eds), Comrade & Commander: The Life and Times of Joe Modise (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2024) THE EDITORS of this book provide a summary of Joe Modise’s life and then describe it […]
SOUTH Africa’s entire history has been one of dispossession; and now repossession. Violence is hardwired into the nation’s social fabric and psyche. But its dynamics are by no means straightforward; nor can they be explained […]
THERE is still no definite explanation, political or financial, for the demise of the Rand Daily Mail forty years ago. But on 14 June 1985 the Weekly Mail (WM) was launched by redundant journalists. It […]
ONE hundred days! It feels like a hundred years; and one word sums up Trump.2: chaos. Is this personal, tactical or strategic? Those who know Donald Trump describe him as narcissistic, vindictive and attention seeking […]
Marion Sparg, Guilty and Proud: An MK Soldier’s Memoir of Exile, Prison and Freedom (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2024) EXTRAORDINARY and challenging circumstances raising matters of conscience can have unpredictable outcomes. Among the small group of […]