A group of international mercenary pilots in Uganda in the mid-1990s fly weapons across Africa, selling them to the highest bidder. A young Congolese cowherd joins them and finds himself in ... read more
The range of Blackburn's books testifies to her profound curiosity about the world. This account of her journey (imaginative as well as physical) among the little-known South African people ... read more
A valuable account of one of the greatest advocates in modern history, revered not only in South Africa but around the globe as a defendant of the rule of law.
Nubia and Egypt, the empires of the Sudan, the kingdoms of Ethiopia and Benin and those of the Asante, Yoruba, Hausa and Zulus... Nine scholars on African kingship; some illustrations.
Born in Kenya, the author was two when the Mau Mau uprising began. A powerful memoir of this very difficult period and the end of empire in Kenya.The author worked for many years for the BBC... read more
The British empire observed through the lens of a single day: the 29th September 1923, when the Mandate for Palestine became law and the British empire reached its maximum extent, just as i... read more
The rise and fall of the Bacris and Busnachs, two Jewish families whose prominence in trade and banking led them to play a small but crucial diplomatic and logistical role in the Napoleonic ... read more
Explores the interaction of mass-market diamonds and German colonialism in Africa. Or how the new American fashion for diamond engagement rings funded Germany in two world wars.
Brought up in late-Victorian Presbyterian Aberdeenshire, McBey became a war artist in WW1. A decade later he married the American Marguerite Loeb and went to live in Tangier, in a house on O... read more
9000BC years ago there were pastoral economies; by 3000BC the desert reasserted itself. A fascinating study of human adaptability in the face of early climate change and geophysical influenc... read more