In my opinion, works of history are to be judged by two standards: (1)Is it readable? Much history is dry, wooden, and laborious. Pakenham's book, however, is exceptionally readable. The narrative flows quickly, and while at first it is sometimes difficult to keep tabs on all the players, he seems mindful of this, and reminds the reader why a certain character is re-entering the story.
But much history that is readable is just as often trite, superficial, hopelessly popularized, or worse, just plain bad history. This brings me to the second standard (2): Does the author interact with the original sources? Or does he/she merely repeat what others have written on the subject?
Pakenham did his research. He engages original sources, actually interviewed Boer War veterans, and even did some interesting detective work to uncover more documents germaine to the topic. Many of his conclusions are probably controversial, but whether one agrees with him or not, one has to grant that he does engage the original sources.
One more thing worth mentioning: This work is noticably lacking in the self-concious national self-flagelation that marks historical scholarship in the last decade. There is no need for Pakenham to say, "Imperialism was so awful!", because he lets the historical actions (and actors) speak for themselves. The result is a moral stance that is not pedantically moralistic.