A Prospect Best Book of 2021‘A fascinating and timely book.’ William Boyd‘Gripping…a must read.’ FT‘Compelling…humane, reasonable, and ultimately optimistic.’ Evening Standard‘[A] valuable guide to a complex narrative.’ The TimesIn 1897, Britain sent a punitive expedition to the Kingdom of Benin, in what is today Nigeria, in retali...

Empire. Plunder. Resistance. The forgotten history of Britain, Ghana and the Asante gold.LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE'A compelling, challenging and important book.' William BoydKumasi, the Asante capital, burns. British soldiers prowl the palace, looting as much gold as they can find, before razing it to the ground. In Britain the soldiers are feted as ...

In December 1941 the Japanese invaded Burma. For the British, the longest land campaign of the Second World War had begun. 100,000 African soldiers were taken from Britain’s colonies to fight the Japanese in the Burmese jungles. They performed heroically in one of the most brutal theatres of war, yet their contribution has been largely ignored.Isaac Fadoyebo was one of those ‘Burma Boys’. At the age of sixteen he ran away from his Nigerian village to join the British Army. Sent to ...

In 1897, Britain responded to the killing of a group of officials by razing an empire to the ground. The men had been travelling to the ancient Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Nigeria, when they were ambushed and killed by local soldiers. Just six weeks later, the British had exacted their revenge, set Benin aflame, exiled the king and annexed the territory. They also made off with some of Africa's greatest works of art.This is the story of the "Benin Bronzes", their creation, the...

News correspondent Michael Nicholson went to Sarajevo to report on the horrors of the Bosnian War, but ended up smuggling one little girl away from the carnage.Natasha’s Story is the heart-wrenching account of how the TV reporter risked everything to bring a nine-year-old orphan home with him, and gave her a new life 1,000 miles from her native land.The true story, which went on to become the award-winning film Welcome to Sarajevo, is both an indictment of the horror and fu...

When Singapore fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, it was a devastating blow to the Allies, the British Empire and signalled a significant turning point in history. James Leasors story begins as far back as the early nineteenth century, with imperialism and the settlement founded by Sir Stamford Raffles. He charts the years leading up to Singapores defeat and the realisation that the West was not invincible. It includes direct, personal input from some of the main players involved inclu...

For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma—through sanctions and tourist boycotts—only to see an apparent slide toward even harsher dictatorship. But what do we really know about Burma and its history? And what can Burma's past tell us about the present and even its future?In The River of Lost Footsteps, Thant Myint-U tells the story of modern Burma, in p...

'A splendid, exciting book' Daily Mirror'The story of the first all-out struggle in Asia between Communism and the West, vividly told in an exciting and engrossing book' Sunday ExpressOnly three short years after the end of the Japanese occupation, war came again to Malaya. The Chinese-backed guerrillas called it the War of the Running Dogs - their contemptuous term for those in Malaya who remained loyal to the British. Th...

The incredible story of Gyles Mackrell and his Burmese, elephant-assisted wartime rescue mission.In the summer of 1942, Gyles Mackrell – a decorated First World War pilot and tea plantation overseer, performed a series of heroic rescues in the hellish jungles of Japanese-occupied Burma – with the aid of twenty elephants.At the age of 53, Mackrell went into the ‘green hell’ of the Chaukan Pass on the border of North Burma and Assam. Here, Mackrell and a team of elephant ride...

Martin Bell's was BBC TV's principal correspondent during the war in Bosnia from 1992 to 1995. The original version of this passionate and personal account of the conflict was written while the war was still going on, some of it late at night in the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo.In Harm's Way is not only about the progress of the war; it is about its origins, how it began and how it could have been avoided; it is about the human costs of war in which all the peoples of Bosnia became the v...

Author Maurice Harvey returns with another collection of exciting firsthand stories from his time as a missionary and as the Bible Society photojournalist. He recounts many of his firsthand experiences over the years as an international photojournalist in Into the Great Unknown.The memoir begins with Maurice leaving the safety of his New Zealand home as a young man in the 1960s and heading into deepest Africabound for the war-ravaged Congo region. From there, the story continues as...

Minefields is a compelling exploration of a foreign correspondent's life - proof of Hugh's belief that 'if you go looking for trouble, you'll probably find it'.Over nearly forty years as a journalist and foreign correspondent, Hugh Riminton has been shot at, blown up, threatened with deportation and thrown in jail. He has reported from nearly fifty countries, witnessed massacres in Africa, wars and conflicts on four continents, and every k...