In 1914 Simon Fonthill is fifty-nine and visiting his farm in Northern Rhodesia when the First World War reaches Africa. He offers his services to Lord Kitchener, expecting that the decisive struggle will be in Europe, but is told to remain where he is as fighting threatens neighbouring German East Africa. With Alice and the veteran Jenkins beside him, Fonthill is drawn into another campaign of reconnaissance, improvised columns, difficult terrain and enemies who refuse to fight the war Britain expected.
The novel moves the series into the East African Campaign of the First World War. German commander Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck waged a mobile campaign that tied down far larger Allied forces across German East Africa and neighbouring colonies, continuing until after the armistice in Europe. By ending Fonthill’s long imperial career in this theatre, Wilcox connects the small colonial wars of the Victorian era with the global conflict that transformed the political world in which those campaigns had been fought.
