J. Lee Thompson provides us a well-researched and well-written account of Lord Milner, one of Britain's leading imperialists at the end of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth century. Thompson traces Milner's humble beginnings, German background, and studies at the cosmopolitan Balliol College, Oxford. At Balliol, Milner joined the Oxford Union Society, a debate club attracting mainly students with political ambitions. What appealed most to Milner in the society's debates was the unity and consolidation of the British Empire. According to Thompson, Milner was also a social activist who did community work, including delivering lectures among the poor in the slums of London.

In 1879, Milner left Oxford to pursue a legal career in London, a common route for those with aspirations for political power. However, he soon lost interest in the legal fraternity and became a journalist for the Pall Mall Gazette. Milner and the Pall Mall Gazette strongly supported John Mackenzie of the London Missionary Society and his vigorous campaign in England against intrusion of Transvaal Boers into the land of the Tswana among whom he had worked as a missionary.

Milner became private secretary to George Goschen, Liberal MP, in 1884. Thompson shows us that efforts were made in some quarters to recruit Milner into standing for parliament, including being MP for his beloved Oxford, but his critical views on the government's foreign policy cost him the opportunity. In 1889, Milner moved to Egypt where he worked as director-general of accounts and met a number of key personalities such as Joseph Chamberlain and Horatio Herbert Kitchener; he was also introduced to Henry Morton Stanley, who was preparing his book Through the Dark Continent.

In 1892, Milner returned to England where he became chairman of the Inland Revenue and also published his highly acclaimed book Britain in Egypt, which justified Britain's control in Egypt. The success of this book, which was praised by Cecil Rhodes among others, “transformed Milner from a relatively obscure civil servant into an imperial figure of importance” (87), and he also earned knighthood.

Milner's abilities and work in Egypt led the colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain appointing him high commissioner and governor of the Cape Colony in 1897. In South Africa, Milner had to deal with the difficult Uitlander question and the intransigent Boer republic of the Transvaal following the failed Jameson Raid. We are also informed that Milner wanted to settle a large number of British people in South Africa in order to counter the numerical strength of the Boers. Thompson writes that “Milner found in South Africa an entrenched system of segregation into which non-Europeans had been consigned by both their British and Dutch rulers. … Milner was sympathetic to the problems of British subjects, of whatever color, but his main objective was to promote British paramountcy, and over time this concern superseded all else, including what would later be called `human rights'” (114).

Thompson tells us that “On October 22, 1897, Milner departed on the first train to run from the Cape to Bulawayo in Rhodesia. … A good amount of his tour was also taken up in meeting with the leaders of numerous African tribes, listening to their complaints of mistreatment and injustice. These included the famous pro-British King Khama. At Mafikeng Milner replied to a Native Address that he believed they had seen the last of the disturbances and reassured them the Crown would protect their rights” (116). The main worry concerning Thompson's book is the “marginalization” of the Africans. In this regard his book is not different from others written in the past where African voices are peripheral. The plight of the Africans should have been elaborated. We are told that “the ten day coach mule cart journey to Salisbury, through primeval wilderness such as Milner had never experienced, began on November 7. The natives who came out to greet him, though quiet and well behaved, he described as `absolutely the most primitive savages I have ever seen'” (117). Although this should be understood in the context of the racial attitudes at the time, Milner's condescending attitude toward the helpless Africans should have been elaborated by Thompson.

However, Milner strongly disapproved the ruthless seizure of Africans’ land by European settlers although he did nothing to better the situation: “Despite his diplomatic utterances there, Milner called what he had seen in Rhodesia `a bad story' with land `alienated in the most reckless manner to companies and individuals' and `a lot of unfit people' allowed to exercise power, `especially with regard to the natives in a manner that cannot be defended'” (117).

In his lengthy recount of the South African War, Thompson briefly alludes to reliance on Africans by both the British and the Boers, but this is too generalized. Africans such as the Bakgatla-baga-Kgafela had fought throughout the war on theation to the tender mercies of the white colonials, which meant disenfranchisement and the perpetuation of a segregated South Africa. His naive hopes of eventual white enlightenment would take almost a century, and much bloodshed and suffering, before being realized,” writes Thompson (236). One feels that Thompson should have provided an epilogue on the “native question” and apartheid in South Africa from 1910 to 1994.

Thompson demonstrates the key role Milner played as a member of David Lloyd George's War Cabinet in the Great War (1914–18). However, again he fails to discuss the role played by the Africans from the British empire in the Great War. Notwithstanding criticism, Thompson's book provides an interesting read on an aspect of British imperial history.