Mark Simner: 4 books

Pathan Rising tells the story of the large-scale tribal unrest that erupted along the North West Frontier of India in the late 1890s; a short but sharp period of violence that was initiated by the Pathan tribesmen against the British. Although the exact causes of the unrest remain unclear, it was...

In 1895, a small Indian Army garrison, commanded by Surgeon-Major Sir George Scott Robertson and Captain Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, was besieged by a Chitrali and Pathan army at the fort of Chitral. Despite the odds heavily stacked against them, Robertson’s beleaguered little garrison held...

Perhaps one of the most dramatic events of the late Victorian period was the death of General Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon at the hands of the Mahdi’s fanatical warriors as they finally broke their way into the Sudanese city of Khartoum. The story is well-known, recounted in numerous books and celebrated...

On 18 June 1815 some 200,000 men fought in what would be the most important land battle Europe had ever seen, the Battle of Waterloo. It was not the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, nor would it actually be the last, but it ultimately brought to an end almost a quarter of a century of virtually...