News from the Front: Review:

Khaki and Red

by Donald Featherstone

and

Colonial Wars Source Book

by Philip Haythornthwaite


Khaki and Red; Soldiers of the Queen in India and Africa by Donald Featherstone
Published by Arms and Armour Press,
ISBN 1-85409-262-6
Price: 16.99 pounds.

Colonial Wars Source Book by Philip Haythornthwaite
Published by Arms and Armour Press,
ISBN 1-85409-196-4
Price: 25.00 pounds.

One of an author's greatest fears - short of bad reviews or, worse, finding that his books are ignored completely! - is that half way through work on some challenging and original work another a book on a similar theme will appear in print by another author. This unpleasant experience has just happened twice to this reviewer; whilst writing a book on the life and campaigns of the Victorian soldier (quick plug; it's called Go To Your God Like A Soldier, and is about to be published by Greenhill Books), I've been pipped at the post by both Don Featherstone's Khaki and Red, and Philip Haythornthwaite's Colonial Wars Source Book.

Khaki and Red

Taking Don's book first, it must be said that the title is something of a misnomer, since it does not attempt to cover all British campaigns in India and Africa, but concentrates rather on the North-West Frontier and Egypt and the Sudan; there is nothing at all, for example, about southern Africa. Don always produces a good exciting read, and as usual this book is well illustrated with dramatic and atmospheric pictures from the contemporary illustrated papers.

Having said that, it is perhaps fair to say that there is not much new in it; fans of Don's other Colonial books will have got much of this already. There are some very nice line drawings of weapon and uniform styles, but these appeared twenty years ago in Don's Weapons and Uniforms of the Victorian Soldier.

In short, this book makes a colourful introduction to the period, and if you are still feeling your way around these particular campaigns, you will find much to interest you; if, on the other hand, you've already dug a little deeper, you will probably have access to all this already.

Colonial Wars Sourcebook

Philip Haythornthwaite's Colonial Wars Source Book, on the other hand, has a fair claim to be comprehensive. After a brief introductory chapter, outlining the state of the British army in the Victorian era, it takes each theatre of the world in turn, providing a brief outline of British military operations there. The amount of work that this has entailed is staggering yo think about; there was scarcely a part of the world that we didn't fight in at some time or another, and each campaign is briefly outlined here, together with a summary of the military systems of the opposition. There are brief biographies of the major personalities of the period, and to round off, there are very useful chapters on the way that colonial campaigns were depicted at the time, in both illustrations and text, and an invaluable bibliography.

Inevitably, given the scope of the subject, there are a few weak areas; the illustrations are fairly standard ones, and the author's understanding of some of the opposition groups is sometimes a bit hazy. Nevertheless, these are essentially minor quibbles; because Colonial Wars Source Book is a superb work of reference, ideal for beginners finding their way around a new period, certainly, but the fact is that no Colonial enthusiast can really afford to be without it.

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© Copyright 1996 by Partizan Press.

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