Garnet Joseph Wolseley entered the British Army in 1852 and accumulated an unusually wide range of campaign experience in Burma, the Crimea, India, China, Canada and Africa. His success in the Ashanti campaign of 1873–1874 made him one of the best-known soldiers of the Victorian era, and he became closely associated with a group of professionally minded officers sometimes called the ‘Wolseley Ring’.
Wolseley played an important part in British army reform and held senior commands across the empire. He commanded the British expedition to Egypt in 1882, defeating Ahmed ‘Urabi at Tel el-Kebir, and later led the Nile Expedition sent to relieve Charles Gordon at Khartoum. He eventually became Commander-in-Chief of the Forces and was promoted field marshal.
Garnet Wolseley appears in John Wilcox’s The Diamond Frontier, The Guns of El Kebir and Siege of Khartoum, where his real commands provide the military framework for Simon Fonthill’s scouting and intelligence missions.