England Wants Your Gold

A riveting story laced with romance, humour, political intrigue and violence against the background of the infamous Jameson Raid that triggered the Anglo-Boer War. Caught up in the turbulence of the time is Brigid O'Meara, a beautiful Irish musical hall performer who arrives in Pretoria in 1895 to have an illegal abortion only to find herself drawn into the intrigues of a group of British Uitlander sympathisers, who are planning the overthrow of Paul Kruger’s Boer Republic. She falls in love with the charismatic leader of the group, a trader who is smuggling weapons into the Transvaal and operating from a small, unpretentious hotel right on the doorstepsof the Raadsaal. The discovery of gold in the Transvaal was a double-edges sword bringing wealth to the impoverished agrarian economy, but adding to the simmering conflict between the Republic and Great Britain. When a burgher announced joyfully to General Joubert that a new gold reef had been discovered, he replied, ‘You would do better to weep; for this gold will cause our country to be soaked in blood.’