Brian Willan is Senior Research Fellow at Rhodes University, Extraordinary Professor at Sol Plaatje and North West Universities. He has written extensively on Sol Plaatje and other aspects of nineteenth- and twentieth-century South African history and literature. He is author of Sol Plaatje: a life of Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje, 1876-1932 (Jacana, 2018), and co-editor (with Janet Remmington and Bheki Peterson) of Sol Plaatje's Native Life in South Africa: Past and Present, co-edited (Wits UP, 2016) and (with Sabata Mokae), of a collection of Plaatje's letters, to be published by Historical Publications Southern Africa in 2020.

... a most important account of daily life during the siege... an authentic voice of African participation in the war.... a view of the siege of Mafeking by a budding African intellectual and leader of his people, Solomon Plaatje, who was employed as interpreter in the Mafeking magistrate's court. Plaatje's prose is crisp, informative and gripping, and the diary makes marvellous reading.

• Preface to the centenary edition; introduction; prologue; October-March 1900.