Return of a King

William Dalrymple

£12.99

We send all orders via Royal Mail: within the UK, choose from 1st Class, 2nd Class or Special Delivery; for the rest of the world, International Standard or International Tracked. Delivery and packaging charges are calculated automatically at the checkout.

To collect orders in person from the Bookshop, choose Click and Collect at the checkout.


Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
30 January 2014
ISBN: 9781408831595
Paperback
608 pages

From the publisher

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2013 'Dazzling' Sunday Times 'Magnificent' Guardian 'Sparkling' Daily Telegraph In the spring of 1839, Britain invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Nearly 20,000 British and East India Company troops poured through the high mountain passes and re-established on the throne Shah Shuja ul-Mulk. On the way in, the British faced little resistance. But after two years of occupation, the Afghan people rose in answer to the call for jihad and the country exploded into violent rebellion. The First Anglo-Afghan War ended in Britain's greatest military humiliation of the nineteenth century: an entire army of the then most powerful nation in the world ambushed in retreat and utterly routed by poorly equipped tribesmen. Using a range of forgotten Afghan and Indian sources, William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris. Return of a King is history at its most urgent and important. 'As taut and richly embroidered as a great novel ... this book is a masterpiece' Sunday Telegraph