Historically, was he viewed as a heartless bounder? (4)
I believe the answer is:
boer
'historically was he viewed' is the definition.
The answer is a person as well as being a singular noun. This is suggested by the definition.
'a heartless bounder?' is the wordplay.
'a heartless' means to remove the middle letters.
'bounder' with its centre taken out is 'BOER'.
'as' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for boer that I've seen before include "White South African of Dutch descent" , "Afrikaans speaker" , "Afrikaner" , "South African such as President Kruger" , "one from East London perhaps" .)