The Butterfly Lion

The fictional character of Bertie Andrews is born around 1897 in the real-world stretch of bush veldt of Tybamate, a remote area near the modern boundary of Kruger National Park in northeastern South Africa. Bertie is born to white parents who have come to the former British colony to farm. While his mother is homesick for England, his father raises cattle and is depicted in the novel fighting African wildlife, drought, and dwindling livestock.

This timeline puts Bertie’s childhood between the First Boer War (1890-1891) and the Second Boer War (1899-1902). Both conflicts were primarily about ending British control of South Africa, though Britain emerged victorious in these wars and South Africa did not gain its independence until 1961. Though the story makes no mention of the early 20th-century turmoil in South Africa, public perception of the Boer War in Britain soured England on its colonial ambitions in this part of the world, so many looked down on British colonists of southern Africa. When Bertie is eight—around 1905—he is sent to England for a formal education; it is possible to conclude that some of the bullying he experiences at boarding school has to do with his family’s status as colonists.