''Ladysmith'' is

Giles Foden Giles Foden (born 11 January 1967)George Stade and Karen Karbiener (eds), ''Encyclopaedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present'', 2nd edn, Infobase Publishing, 2010, p. 176. is an English author, best known for his novel ''The Last King of S ...

’s second novel. It was published in 1999 by ''Faber and Faber''.

Plot summary

The time is November 1899 through February 1900; the place is

Ladysmith Ladysmith may refer to: * Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa * Ladysmith, British Columbia, Canada * Ladysmith, Wisconsin, United States * Ladysmith, New South Wales, Australia * Ladysmith, Virginia, United States * Ladysmith Island, Queenslan ...

, a small railway town in the British

Colony of Natal The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on 4 May 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 combined with three other colonies to ...

near the border with the Boer Republics. The

Boers Boers ( ; af, Boere ()) are the descendants of the Dutch-speaking Free Burghers of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. From 1652 to 1795, the Dutch East India Company controlled this area ...

have surprised the world with initial victories over the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

and have now laid siege to Ladysmith. As they shell the town from surrounding hills, people die, disease is rampant, structures collapse, starvation looms, there is panic about enemy agents and yet the British muddle through. The setting of Giles Foden’s novel is historically accurate, and a number of historical figures appear as characters; for example, the

arrest a young reporter named

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...

as he struggles to reach the besieged town, and an Indian lawyer-turned-medical volunteer named Mohandas K. Gandhi becomes more committed to his philosophy of active non-violence. The core of ''Ladysmith'' is a fictionalised version of a love story that

found in the letters of his great-grandfather, who was a British soldier at Ladysmith. Bella, the Irish hotelkeeper's daughter, falls in love, first, with a British soldier; and later with a

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

barber, thus defying convention and rebelling against her father.

Release details

* 1999, UK, Faber and Faber , Pub date 2 December 1999, paperback * 2000, UK, Faber and Faber , Pub date 3 November 2000, paperback * 2000, UK, Alfred A. Knopf , Pub date ? April 2000, hardback * 2001, USA, Vintage , Pub date ? August 2001, paperback {{DEFAULTSORT:Ladysmith (Novel) 1999 British novels Historical novels Boer Wars Fiction set in 1899 Fiction set in 1900 Novels set in South Africa Faber and Faber books