TIP and RUN by Edward Paice in large paperback at €24.
A controversial and groundbreaking account of the infamous East African campaign during the First World War from the author of The Wrath of God, the highly regarded account of the Great Lisbon Earthquake.
In the aftermath of the Great War, the East Africa campaign was destined to be dismissed by many in Britain as a remote ‘sideshow’ in which only a handful of names and episodes – the Konigsberg, von Lettow-Vorbeck, the ‘Naval Expedition to Lake Tanganyika’ – achieved any lasting notoriety.
But to the other combatant powers – Germany, South Africa, India, Belgium and Portugal – it was, and would remain, a campaign of huge importance.
A ‘small war’, consisting of a few ‘local affairs’, was all that was expected in August 1914 as Britain moved to eliminate the threat to the high seas of German naval bases in Africa. But two weeks after the Armistice was signed in Europe, British and German troops were still fighting in Africa after four years of what one campaign historian described as ‘a war of extermination and attrition without parallel in modern times’.
The expense of the campaign to the British Empire was immense, the Allied and German ‘butchers bills’ even greater. But the most tragic consequence of the two sides’ deadly game of ‘tip and run’ was the devastation of an area five times the size of Germany, and civilian suffering on a scale unimaginable in Europe. Such was the cost of ‘The White Man’s Palaver’, the final phase of the European conquest of Africa.
Edward Paice was a History Scholar at Cambridge and winner of the Leman prize. After a decade working in the City he spent four years living and writing in East Africa. He was awarded a Visiting Fellowship by Magdalene College, Cambridge in 2003-4.
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DAUGHTERS-IN-LAW by Joanna Trollope in paperback at €11.
A welcome treat for the many millions of Joanna Trollope fans worldwide. Can a mother ever hand over her son to another woman?
Rachel has always loved being at the centre of her large family. She has fiercely devoted herself to her three sons all their lives, and continues to do so even now they are all grown up. They are, of course, devoted to her – she and Anthony, their father, hold the family together at their big, beautiful, ramshackle house near the wide, bird-haunted coast of Suffolk.
But when Luke, her youngest, gets married, Rachel finds that control is slipping away. Other people seem to be becoming more important to her children than she is, and she can no longer rely on her role as undisputed matriarch. A power struggle develops which can only end in unhappiness; her three daughters-in-law want to do things their own way, and so, to her grief, do her sons.
Joanna Trollope is the author of fifteen highly acclaimed, bestselling contemporary novels. She has also written a study of women in the British Empire, Britannia’s Daughters, as well as a number of historical novels. She was born in Gloucestershire and now lives in London. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Snippets
The RIVER COTTAGE VEG
EVERYDAY cookbook has been a smash success since publication last November and deservedly so. For veggies and non-veggies alike the recipes are appealing, uncomplicated and delicious.
If you’re short of reading matter and cash in these troubled times, come and browse our huge Used Book section.
The Griffin has thousands of used books in good condition and very reasonably priced from Aga sagas and romance to crime and thrillers, biography and cookery.
DON’T MISS the Collections Sale in Almancil. Alison will be at the Griffin Bookshop with her collection of ladies fashion with big discounts from Wednesday, February 1 until Saturday February 4.
