South African Memories: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

South African Memories, credited to Lady Sarah Wilson, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of South African Memories, by Lady Sarah Wilson. Read by SallyMc. Lady Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson was the aunt of Winston Spencer Churchill. In 1899 she became the first woman war correspondent when she was recruited to cover the Siege of Mafeking for the Daily Mail during the Boer War. She moved to Mafeking with her husband at the start of the war, where he was aide-de-camp to Colonel Robert Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell asked her to leave Mafeking for her own safety after the Boers threatened to storm the British garrison. This she duly did, and set off on a madcap adventure in the company of her maid, travelling through the South African countryside until she was finally captured by the enemy and returned to the town in exchange for a horse thief being held there. Dwindling food supplies became a constant theme in the stories she sent back to the Mail and the situation seemed hopeless when the garrison was hit by an outbreak of malarial typhoid. In this weakened state the Boers managed to penetrate the outskirts of the town but the British stood firm and repelled the assault. (Summary by Wikipedia)

Recording facts

• Recording title: South African Memories
• Author credits: Lady Sarah Wilson
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 19
• Listed recording duration: 8:05:04

Track guide

1. 00 - Dedication and Preface — 2:57
2. 01 - First Voyage to South Africa — 18:34
3. 02 - Kimberley and the Jameson Raid — 18:27
4. 03 - The Immediate Results of the Raid — 20:11
5. 04 - Johannesburg and Pretoria in 1896 — 26:35
6. 05 - Three Years After — 23:30
7. 06 - Preparations for War — 26:22
8. 07 - In a Rebellious Colony — 35:41
9. 08 - Betrayed by a Pigeon — 19:02
10. 09 - How I was made a Prisoner — 38:50
11. 10 - Exchanged for a Horse Thief — 26:03
12. 11 - Life in a Besieged Town — 25:35
13. 12 - Life in a Besieged Town (continued) — 22:46
14. 13 - Eloff's determined attack on Mafeking — 26:03
15. 14 - Across the Transvaal to Pretoria during the War — 17:45
16. 15 - Pretoria and Johannesburg under Lord Roberts and Military Law — 21:21
17. 16 - My return to civilisation once more — 31:11
18. 17 - The work of Lady Georgiana Curzon — 34:50
19. 18 - Fourth Voyage to the Cape — 49:28

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.