Does anyone have any good recommendations on reading about the Boer war. It's always been a subject that just slipped outside my interest in detail.
Apologies for the late reply. I can recommend Spencer Jones work. Specifically
From Boer War to World War. Is a good one. As the name implies it does focus on the changes in British Army training in response to the Boer war but it does often fill in knowledge of WW1 in the background. He also has some lectures on YouTube that are worth the time, IMHO:
Is there any possibility that the second Boer war could have been won at a much lower cost to the British
There were several opportunities to improve the early campaign during the Boer offensive into Natal. Perhaps most pertinently, if Sir George White had followed the plan of withdrawing his forces towards the Tugela river, he could have established a defensive position on the river instead of throwing away pieces of his command defending far-flung, indefensible positions, refusing to capitalize on the tactical victories his troops did gain, and waiting in Ladysmith to be besieged. On the downside this may keep the Boers from falling into passivity quite so quickly, but I think that is likely to happen anyway. And if when Bullers (or whoever is in command) arrives he now has the option to wait for his troops and supplies to be ready before trying to cross rather than throwing his forces at the crossing in desperate attempts to relieve Ladysmith. He may be able to make his first effort a Tugela heights rather than a Colenso.
Even before this, you could have the government listen to the military leadership who warned them that the Boers were likely to invade and that there were not enough troops in South Africa to stop them.
You could also keep Wolseley from messing with the command and troop arrangements before they set sail. In many cases units had their commanders changed at the last minute and arrived totally separately from the rest of their command and had to sort out command and unit groupings ad hoc when they got there.
without butterflying lessons learned in the war.
The tricky thing about this is, that like many other relatively small wars (the Russo-Japanese war is a perfect example) the lessons learned were not totally clear.
On the one hand you had lessons that were reinforced by the Boer war but were actually driven by something else. A good example of this is the SMLE. It was actually birthed prior to the Boer war. It came out of a suggestion to Wolseley that all troops be equipped with carbines. A number of carbines were developed as prototypes to further this idea, some being lengthened to be closer to a short rifle. Among these was the progenitor to the SMLE. The rifles adoption actually owes more to the change in leadership that came from the Boer war than it does directly to the war itself. The Wolseley ring (called the African faction as it was mostly made up of veterans of African campaigns) was the dominant group in Army leadership at the outbreak of war. They were not necessarily opposed to a shorter rifle but they tended to be concerned with the potential loss of range that came with a shorter barrel as their experience taught them that range was still an important factor in warfare. The Boer war actually backed this view up more than anything. But this group being blamed for the early defeats led to the Indian faction (unsurprisingly being made up of veterans from India) under Roberts becoming dominant. Their experience on the North West Frontier led them to value a shorter, handier rifle to better be able to deal with ambush by mountain tribesmen. But with the Indian faction more or less being the only one left standing at wars end, they got their way.
You also have situations where different people took opposing lessons from the war. For instance you had Roberts, Kitchener, and the like convinced that the role of Cavalry going forward was as mounted infantry alone based on the relative lack of opportunities for the use of arme blanche during the war. But you also had men like French and Haig (who would later become prominent) convinced that there was still a role for such things based on the cavalry charge during the Battle of Elandslaagte (which was actually possible due to special circumstances including Hamilton's earlier infantry attack.
Similarly, Battles like Tugela Heights showed some that artillery, in close coordination with infantry and using indirect fire were the way forward, while others saw the limited benefit of the artillery during more mobile campaigns (often when they were split up into individual batteries or even individual guns) as proof that the artillery should be deployed as far forward as possible to ensure maximum chance to damage the enemy and maximum morale advantage for the other arms. The early battles had shown that artillery deployed too close were very vulnerable, but this type of campaign brought that into question. Additionally, the adoption of QF guns (likely to happen regardless as most European armies were adopting them) allowed for the use of gun shields which seemed to allow the artillery to again be used far forward.
You have lessons learned that failed to stick. Cavalry were trained as mounted infantry at first but with Roberts departure (he advocated for conscription when Haldane was trying to sell the more politically realistic Haldane reforms to the public) then Haig and French brought the lance and sabre back (thankfully they did not regress the change completely, British cavalry were still trained in marksmanship). The lessons of increased Artillery expenditure, indirect fire, and the need for heavier guns generally died under the belief that mobility is key and lighter guns and less tail were needed.
And finally you have the wrong lessons learned. For instance, in Canada, instead of sending the Militia to the Boer war, as the British had asked, Sir Wilfred Laurier instead sent volunteer formations. This was an attempt to appease both the pro-war Anglo population and the anti-war Quebecois. These troops generally had to be trained by British forces when they arrived. But this reinforced the already existing idea in Canada that Militia were superior to Regulars and that volunteer formations were quicker to raise than using the existing Militia units. Sam Hughes would use both of these sentiments to make a bloody mess of Canadian mobilization in WW1.
Additionally, the Boer experience would reinforce the already present idea that a smaller calibre round was needed that could be accurate out to longer ranges. This probably slowed down improvements to the SMLE by making the Army beleive that the Pattern 14 ( Pattern 13,Pattern 12, Pattern 11 ect. ) rifles in .276 would include any new additions necessary, so there was no real need to improve the rifles they had. As it turned out, the .303 was more than enough for WW1, and the British probably would have been better served to update the rifle as they went and focus less on long range.
So basically, what lessons were actually learned from the Boer War is sometimes a more complicated question than it first appears.