The remarkable, and often touching, friendship between Winston Churchill and Jan Smuts is a rich study in contrasts. In youth they occupied very different worlds: Churchill, the rambunctious and thrusting young aristocrat; Smuts, the ascetic, philosophical Cape farm boy who would go on to Cambridge. Brought together first as enemies in the Anglo-Boer War, and later as allies in the First World War, the men forged a friendship which spanned the first half of the twentieth century and endured until Smuts’s death in 1950. Richard Steyn, author of Jan Smuts: Unafraid of Greatness, examines this close friendship through two world wars and the intervening years, drawing on a maze of archival and secondary sources including letters, telegrams and the voluminous books written about both men. This is a fascinating account of two remarkable men in war and peace: one the leader of the Empire, the other the leader of a small fractious member of that Empire who nevertheless rose to global prominence. “Richard Steyn has painted a vivid picture of how Churchill and Smuts having started as enemies in the Boer War, became close confidants, friends and strong mutual admirers of each other’s exceptional talents.” –Paul Courtenay, International Churchill Society (UK)