From the Washington Times (9/7/2008):
LEGACY: CECIL RHODES, THE RHODES TRUST AND RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS
By Philip Ziegler
Yale University Press, $45, 400 pages, illus.
REVIEWED BY MARTIN RUBIN
You never know what your most enduring legacy will be. Cecil Rhodes, a megalomaniac if ever there was one, thought that giving his name to a country – Rhodesia – would be his most lasting memorial. “They can’t take a country’s name away,” he is said to have pronounced shortly before his death at the beginning of the 20th century. Rhodes was not known for being naive: Had he not vanquished his rivals so that most of South Africa’s vast mining wealth was under his control, all the while having a spectacular political career that saw him prime minister of the Cape Colony when he was in his early 30s and substantially expanding the pink of the British Empire on the maps of the world? But we who lived in that century when countries’ names fell like ninepins know better. They could and did take the name of his country away: Zambia and Zimbabwe are there to mock his naivete in this one sphere at least.
But a man like Rhodes was determined to have a legacy one way or another and he was bound to get one. He knew that his heart was diseased and that it would kill him before long. He had no descendants or loved ones to provide for, so his enormous fortune would give him another means to leave his mark on this earth: The scholarships that bear his name. . . .
For Martin’s full review, click here or visit www.washingtontimes.com.