"Judge Owen Rogers has written a dense, engrossing and vivid historical account of the lives and times of the lawyers involved in the infamous Jameson Raid of 1896. Crammed with intense lawyerly detail and personal incident, this rigorously researched work pushes the boundaries of South African history writing. Though the battles here were factional, between white people fighting for white interests, Judge Roger's scholarship reminds us of the pivotal place of lawyers, then and now, in protecting the rule of law and advancing the rights of ordinary people. This book makes riveting reading for lawyers and general readers alike," Justice Edwin Cameron, former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa *** ‘An act of such transcendent wickedness’ Owen Rogers draws on a wealth of published and archival material to present a lively, occasionally provocative, account of the lawyers caught up in the Jameson Raid – in the dock, at the bar, on the bench, behind the scenes. Was Kotze CJ as faithful to Kruger as he would have us believe? Did the Pretoria bar’s future leader, Ewald Esselen, belong to an anti-Kruger Boer fifth column? Was Johannesburg’s Jim Leonard QC part of the conspiracy’s inner core or an innocent latecomer? And how should we judge his brother Charles, a leading attorney, who managed to evade trial? These and other questions are explored in a work full of drama, incident and anecdote.