Return of a King : The Battle for Afghanistan

Author(s): William Dalrymple

General & World History

A towering history of the first Afghan War by bestselling historian William Dalrymple. In the spring of 1839, the British invaded Afghanistan for the first time. Led by lancers in scarlet cloaks and plumed shakos, 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. Return of a King is the definitive analysis of the First Afghan War, told through the lives of unforgettable characters on all sides and using for the first time contemporary Afghan accounts of the conflict. Prize-winning and bestselling historian William Dalrymple's masterful retelling of Britain's greatest imperial disaster is a powerful and important parable of colonial ambition and cultural collision, folly and hubris, for our times.


Product Information

William Dalrymple was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu when he was twenty-two. City of Djinns won the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. The Age of Kali won the French Prix D'Astrolabe and White Mughals won the Wolfson Prize for History 2003 and the Scottish Book of the Year Prize. The Last Mughal was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize and won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize. Nine Lives, his most recent book, won the Asia House Award for Asian Literature. He lives with his wife and three children on a farm outside Delhi.

General Fields

  • : 9781408822876
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • : Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
  • : 0.987924
  • : October 2013
  • : United Kingdom
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : William Dalrymple
  • : William Dalrymple
  • : 608
  • : 608
  • : very good
  • : very good
  • : 958.103
  • : 958.103
  • : English
  • : English
  • : 1st edition
  • : 1st edition
  • : Paperback
  • : Paperback