‘We spent all our time surrounded by police cordons and barbed wire, never mind having our bus hijacked.’ – Tommy Bedford, Springboks No. 8 2019 and 2020 mark the fiftieth anniversary of the controversial 1969/70 Springbok rugby tour of the British Isles – a landmark event on both a sporting and political level. Taking place during the time of South Africa’s apartheid dispensation, the tour was characterised throughout by violent demonstrations against the ‘ambassadors of apartheid’. Scenes of chanting demonstrators at the players’ hotels and airports were not uncommon, nor...

‘Dear Sister and Brother, death has been very busy gathering his harvest in this country,’ wrote a soldier of the 80th Regiment from the brutal Anglo-Zulu War front in April 1879. ‘War in all its horrors has been let loose.’ Few wars have captured the imagination as much as this conflict, and foreign names like Isandlwana, Rorke’s Drift and Gingindlovu have become entrenched in British military folklore. Eleven Victoria Crosses were earned during the epic bloody battle at Rorke’s Drift. Isandlwana to Ulundi is a compelling narrative of Lord Chelmsford’s invasion of Zululand to...

It was the year 1891, and the first rugby football team from the British Isles was about to embark on a tour of South Africa; any doubts about the financial sustainability of the venture were removed when mining magnate Cecil John Rhodes thumped the table and declared, ’Let them come. I shall stand security for any shortfall.’ And so a tradition began that survived the financial insecurities of the pioneer years, two World Wars, sports boycotts, and the birth of the professional era. These tours have produced some of the finest Test rugby and some of the greatest players and sides seen...