' The Battle of Majuba Hill , 1881
General Sir Ian Hamilton
The British force that was defeated at Majuba Hill by the Boers on February 27, 1881, numbered fewer than four hundred men. Yet this apparently minor setback to our arms had far-reaching results. Comparatively little importance had been attached to this earlier Boer War by the home government, and one reverse led them to abandon it altogether. Their attitude was everywhere misunderstood, particularly by the Boers, and was perhaps one of the causes of the far more serious Boer War of eighteen years later.
Sir Ian Hamilton , then a subaltern, was wounded at Majuba. On his return to England, he was summoned to Osborne to dine with Queen Victoria and tell her the whole story. He afterwards wrote out his account for the Duke of Cambridge-and it is this account which he will read to listeners tonight.