In the early 1880s Muhammad Ahmed, the self-styled Mahdi, unleashed a spectacularly successful jihadist uprising against Egyptian colonial rule in the Sudan. The Egyptian military met with a series of disasters, including the rout of major expeditions led by hired-in British colonels, William ‘Hicks Pasha’ and Valentine ‘Baker Pasha’. By the spring of 1884, Cairo had bowed to British pressure to withdraw altogether. Beyond the Reach of Empire describes how Major General Charles Gordon was despatched by Gladstone to evacuate the garrison of Khartoum and turn the Sudan over to self-rule. Fearless, profoundly religious and a committed anti-slaver, Gordon would be on familiar ground. In the late 1870s the Khedive of Egypt had employed him as Governor-General of the Sudan. When he reached Cairo, Gordon was offered and accepted the post for a second time. The author goes on to explain how and why the Gordon mission backfired, and then homes in on Sir Garnet Wolseley’s planning and execution of the long-delayed Gordon Relief Expedition. The most advanced part of the British force came within sight of Khartoum only two days after it fell. Underpinned by an extensive programme of fieldwork on remote, rarely visited battlefields, Mike Snook’s narrative is characterised by scrupulous attention to detail, an instinctive grasp of the period and an intimate understanding of its setting. The result is an enthralling tale of Victorian high-adventure, combined with an expose of the myths surrounding the failure to save one of the British Empire’s greatest heroes. The author argues compellingly that the Khartoum affair was mismanaged from the outset. The outcome is the exoneration of the man cast in the role of scapegoat, and an indictment of Wolseley’s generalship over the course of the last and most deeply flawed campaign of his career. AUTHOR: Colonel Mike Snook MBE PhD was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Wales (24th/41st Foot) in 1984 and stayed on for the next 30 years. He served in the Northern Ireland Troubles for more than six years, earning a Queen’s Commendation and an operational MBE along the way. Three times a company commander and a graduate of the Staff College at Camberley, he also served in Germany, Hong Kong, Bosnia and Kenya. He was Chief of Staff British Forces Afghanistan and completed two tours on loan to the South African military. He has been a senior anti-terrorist intelligence officer, co-opted with police Special Branch, and was subsequently the Chief Instructor of the Tactical Intelligence Branch, Defence College of Intelligence, where he directed pre-deployment training for Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also the head of the Education & Training branch at the Defence Academy College of Management & Technology. In 2009 he arrived in Khartoum as Chief J3 Ops with the UN Mission in the Sudan (UNMIS), at which time he conceived a doctrine for the ‘Protection of Civilians’ (POC), before proceeding to launch the mission’s first meaningful POC operations; deployments that helped to close down a vicious inter-tribal conflict. He lived beside the Blue Nile, used his days off to visit the battlefields described in the book and spent his mid-tour leave conducting research in Cairo. Colonel Mike is a recognised authority on the military history of the Victorian era, has led numerous battlefield tours for the Army, and is the author of seven acclaimed books, including How Can Man Die Better, Like Wolves on the Fold and Into the Jaws of Death. Beyond the Reach of Empire was launched at the Hay Literary Festival in 2013. Perhaps unsurprisingly his doctorate (Cranfield University, 2014) is in military history. Older, wiser and slightly tired, he is still writing, owns and manages a small business is pleased to have returned home to Wales at last!