author
Eric Moore Ritchie
A firsthand chronicler of South Africa's First World War campaigns, he wrote from close experience of General Louis Botha's forces. His books capture the pace, strain, and political stakes of fighting in southern Africa during the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
With Botha in the Field
by Eric Moore Ritchie
About the author
Eric Moore Ritchie is remembered for military and political writing centered on southern Africa in the First World War era. His best-known book, With Botha in the Field (1915), is a first-person account of service with General Louis Botha's bodyguard during the rebellion in South Africa and the campaign in German South-West Africa.
He also wrote The Unfinished War: The Drama of Anglo-German Conflict in Africa in Relation to the Future of the British Empire, showing his wider interest in the imperial and strategic questions behind the fighting. Together, these works present him as a vivid contemporary observer who combined reportage, memoir, and argument.
Biographical details about his personal life are not easy to confirm from the sources available here, so the clearest picture comes through his books themselves: energetic, immediate accounts written by someone who was close to the events he described.