Hello and welcome back to Legacy and our story of Cecil Rhodes,

the British imperialist and mining magnate,

who's come to symbolise the worst of colonialism and the racism that underpinned it.

A quick recap of where we got to in our last episode.

Rhodes is an unremarkable vicar's son from the home counties who shakes off a sickly childhood to

build the biggest diamond mining business in southern Africa. He's also found time to take a degree

at Oxford and to become a politician as a member of the Cape Assembly. In Oxford, he's also found his purpose,

to expand the British Empire even further in Africa as a means to promote British supremacy

and advance his own economic interests. But in 1886, where this episode begins, none of this

really matters, because Rhodes has just found out

that the most special person in his life, his company secretary and housemate, Neville Pickering,

may have only hours left to live. The problem for Rhodes is that he's far away from Pickering,

hundreds of miles away, in fact.

August 1886, Witt Waters Rand, Transvaar.

Cecil Rhodes paces, flustered, next to the Kimberley Mail Coach.

People are pushing past him to get on board.

Get me a seat, he orders Charles Rudd, his business partner.

They're a nun, I've tried.

Rhodes holds the piece of paper in his hand up to Rudd's face and shakes it.

It's the telegram telling him Neville Pickering is dying.

Get a seat from one of these people.

He says icily, looking at the travellers climbing into the carriage,

...