Brian Roberts (1) (1930–)

This is meant to be a biography of Rhodes written at a personal level and the blurb on the cover provides words of encouragement with the comment that a new biography of Rhodes is welcomed and timeous. Yes, it is well written, flows well but it is still very much a book of the 1980s and is hence already dated. There are so many biographies of Rhodes but the best remains Rotberg's The Founder. This book is much too coy on matters of Rhodes' sexual orientation and much too uncritical when it comes to business , political and strategic decisions. It is too non judgmental in my opinion. Rhodes was not a hero - he was a man of dubious vision, a speculator on a vast scale and an underhanded businessman and politician. Far too many suffered or were misled by his highhanded behaviour and low business morality.
He lived out his boyish and rather infantile fantasies for the making of a British empire and colonial glory. What audacity for his company to annex a country and to do so in the name of a royal charter and the crown. Then to fight wars and be determined to paint Africa red and build his railroad from Cape Town to Cairo. Economic development may have been the objective but the motives were totally suspect. He made his fortune and left it to the furtherance of his dreams of empire and colonization led by men who were to be educated at Oxford and paid for by the Rhodes scholarships. It was Rhodes' misfortune to suffer from a heart condition and die at 48 and not to leave an heir. This book stacks up alongside other biographies of Rhodes but it is not the serious study that I was expecting.… (mere)