Thomas Pakenham is an Anglo-Irish historian and writer born in 1933 whose work concentrates on imperial expansion, warfare and political conflict in Africa and Ireland. Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford, he worked in journalism before establishing himself as a narrative historian. His early books include The Mountains of Rasselas, about British exploration of Ethiopia, and The Year of Liberty, an account of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. He lives in Ireland and has also become a prominent writer, photographer and campaigner concerned with historic trees.
Pakenham’s best-known historical works are The Boer War and The Scramble for Africa. The latter examines the rapid European partition and conquest of the African continent between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, connecting diplomacy, commerce, missionary activity and military violence. It won both the W. H. Smith Literary Award and the Alan Paton Award. Pakenham later produced illustrated books including Meetings with Remarkable Trees, Remarkable Trees of the World and The Company of Trees. He writes nonfiction rather than historical novels, but his books provide substantial background for fiction about colonial Africa, the Boer War, European imperial rivalry, Ethiopia and Irish rebellion.
