Rhodes House in South Parks Road is one of Oxford's landmark buildings - the legacy of imperialist Cecil Rhodes, who believed an Oxford education would allow colonials to civilise the dark continent of Africa. He himself found it difficult to pay the fees, but eventually made enough money working in Natal to pay his own way through university. Armed with a degree, he set off again for southern Africa, where he amassed the huge fortune which still funds the Oxford education of Rhodes Scholars - notably Bill Clinton - from the former British colonies.

The endowment that Cecil Rhodes left in his 1899 will to strengthen the British Empire, training colonial administrators and "well-rounded men", has mainly produced lawyers, financiers, consultants and academics, argues Philip Ziegler in Legacy: Cecil Rhodes, the Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholarships (Yale, £25).

Ziegler relates how Rhodes's original restriction of the scholarships to men, the physically fit and four whites-only South African schools were all lifted after protracted disputes.

As well as Clinton, the scholarships have produced Jamaican premier Norman Manley and Australian prime minister Bob Hawke. Ziegler argues that Rhodes's legacy of racism and imperial exploitation have been eclipsed as the scholarships have been modernised, particularly in a new venture, under which Mandela-Rhodes scholars from deprived black communities will come to Oxford. Whatever would Rhodes have thought?