Jan Christian Smuts

His main opponent in South Africa was another unusual man, General Jan Christian Smuts, the prime minster of the country.

In this accessible narrative, military historian Richard Overy draws on historical documents and military memoirs to detail the origins of Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) during the WWI period, with special focus on the actions and decisions of political and military leaders and strategists behind the scenes, especially Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, and Jan Christian Smuts. There is also much detail on aircraft and equipment.

The Giza Pyramids at Cairo, painted in 1946, had been given by Churchill to his friend General Jan Christian Smuts, a South African statesman who served as a British field marshal in the Second World War.

In the chapter to follow, the lives of composer Gustav Mahler; philosopher-writer Henry David Thoreau; poet William Wordsworth; and statesman, botanist, and "father" of holistic medicine Jan Christian Smuts are studied.