Book description
The British campaign in the Sudan in Queen Victoria's reign is an
epic tale of adventure more thrilling than any fiction. The story
begins with the massacre of the 11,000 strong Hicks Pasha column in
1883. Sent to evacuate the country, British hero General Gordon was
surrounded and murdered in Khartoum by an army of dervishes led by the
Mahdi. The relief mission arrived 2 days too late. The result was a
national scandal that shocked the Queen and led to the fall of the
British government.
Twelve years later it was the brilliant Herbert Kitchener who struck
back. Achieving the impossible he built a railway across the desert to
transport his troops to the final devastating confrontation at
Omdurman in 1898.
Desert explorer and author Michael Asher has reconstructed this
classic tale in vivid detail. Having covered every inch of the ground
and examined all eyewitness reports, he brings to bear new evidence
questioning several accepted aspects of the story. The result is an
account that sheds new light on the most riveting tale of honour,
courage, revenge and savagery of late Victorian times.
Michael Asher is one of Britain's most prominent desert explorers. He
is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has won the Ness
Award of the RGS and the Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish
Geographical Society. He is the author of eight books including the
acclaimed Thesiger, Lawrence and The Real Story of Bravo Two Zero. He
now lives in Nairobi in Kenya.
