In the original dust cover. Navy cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

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For conditions, please view our photographs. A nice clean rare copy from the library gathered by the famous Cambridge Don, computer scientist, food and wine connoisseur, Jack Arnold LANG. 

This is an account of the Islamic insurgency of the 1880s in Sudan, led by the Sudanese mystic known as the Mahdi (not to be confused with the “Mad Mahdi”, who was a different character altogether – a Somali religious leader of the 1890s). There must have been a load of documents released all at the same time during the late 1950s, as three books – this, ‘The Mahdist State in the Sudan’ by P.M. Holt and ‘British Policy in the Sudan’ by Shibeika – all appeared within a year or two of each other. All three books are excellent, but this is by far the most accessible. Written for the general reader rather than the academic, it reads like a novel; I found it hard to put down once I’d started it, though as I’m researching the area myself perhaps I’m a touch on the biased side.

To say it’s written for the general reader is by no means to damn it with faint praise. On the contrary, it is a fine, well-researched work, clearly written independently of the other two and not beholden to either of them either stylistically or in terms of content. Theobald has obviously done his own spadework and has not produced a mere pale imitation of either of the other two works.

So, whether you’re a general reader or an academic, you won’t go far wrong with this fine little book. Thoroughly recommended.