A revealing biography of a remarkable, but largely forgotten, Englishwoman

Emily Hobhouse has been little celebrated in her own country, England, but she is still revered in South Africa, where she worked so courageously, selflessly and tirelessly to save lives and ameliorate the suffering of thousands of women and children interned in camps set up by British forces during the Anglo-Boer War and where her ashes are enshrined in the National Women's Monument in Bloemfontein.

Elsabé Brits has drawn on a treasure trove of previously private sources, including Emily Hobhouse's diaries, scrap-books and numerous letters, held by a relative of Emily's in Canada, to create this insightful portrait of a truly exceptional Englishwoman.

During the First World War, Hobhouse was an ardent pacifist. In an attempt to initiate a peace process, she secretly met with the German foreign minister Gottlieb von Jagow in Berlin, for which some branded her a traitor. In the war's immediate aftermath she worked for the Save the Children Fund in Leipzig and Vienna, feeding daily for over a year thousands of children, who would otherwise have starved. She later started her own feeding scheme to alleviate ongoing famine.

Despite having been instrumental in saving thousands of lives during two wars, Hobhouse died an outcast - spurned by her country, many of her friends and even some of her relatives. In this biography, which has won the Mbokodo Award for Women in the Arts for Literature, the ATKV (Afrikaans Language and Culture Association) Award for non-fiction and the kykNet/Rapport Award for non-fiction, Brits brings Emily's inspirational and often astonishing story, spanning three continents, back into sharp focus.

'Here was Emily . . . in these diaries and scrapbooks. An unprecedented, intimate angle on the real Emily' Elsabé Brits