Adam Mars-Jones
LADYSMITH by Giles Foden (Faber &Faber)
Giles Foden’s admirable novel emphasises the modernity of the Boer War by including the media in his cast of characters: not merely war correspondents, but also a cameraman, “the Biographer”, who captures events in moving images.
Foden’s great-grandfather was a British trooper at Ladysmith, and copies of his letters were passed down in the family. Some of the novel’s material is in epistolary form, but Foden has invented a pair of brothers to share letter-writing duties.
In fact, he uses a range of perspectives, from a war correspondent, through a pair of young sisters in the town, to Winston Churchill and Mohandas Gandhi. The Boer view is given through a doctor whose wife is interned in the town, rather than through combatants.
It’s a striking paradox that some of the best passages in the book concern those who form no part of the historical record – black tribesmen and women – while the reality of the British trooper remains opaque, despite the wealth of documentation.
It seems that Foden has to nerve himself to describe troopers’ experiences such as the bloody Battle of Spioenkop, perhaps with the feeling of being unable to account for a soldier’s ability to endure them. The sacrifices seem all too real, the gains illusory. It’s as if we can reconstruct everything about the past – except why people accepted the roles they were allotted.