Fritz – Against The Grain – The Remarkable Life of Judge F E T Krause

A barrister with Amsterdam letters and Middle Temple polish, a Boer burgher who becomes against his will a British subject, and a man too pugnacious to live quietly in any age: Fritz Krause (1868-1959) made a career of interesting quarrels. His life carried him from the aftershocks of the Jameson Raid and the Boer War to the surrender of Johannesburg, an Old Bailey trial and Pentonville Prison. A hard-won return to the Transvaal bar launched the next phase of a remarkable career: politician, celebrated defence counsel, judge and campaigner for penal reform. Always combative, always intellectually alive, always animated by restless public energy, Krause never stopped thinking about law and justice. His life reads, as one newspaper said, ‘like a romance’. This is South African history, close up.