South Africa, 1900. The bloody conflict between the forces of the British Empire and the Boer farmers seemed at last to have ended in victory for Queen Victoria’s soldiers, with the Boer capitals taken and occupied. But fast-riding Boer commandos have emerged to introduce a new type of warfare – hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, fought across the veldt of South Africa and leaving the British ‘Khakis’ plodding and bruised in their wake.

To counter these strikes, the British General Kitchener persuades Simon Fonthill, fresh from his triumphs in China’s Boxer Rebellion, to divert to Cape Town and fight the Boers at their own game. So Fonthill, with his old comrade 352 Jenkins as his Regimental Sergeant Major, finds himself reinstated in the British Army as the colonel of his own cavalry unit.

Can the two of them adapt to regular soldiering again – and will they be able to catch and pin down those elusive Boer Generals, Louis Botha and Christiaan de Wet? And can Simon’s wife, Alice, reporting on the war for the MorningPost, extricate herself from her own problems in South Africa?