Gordon at Khartoum

This impassioned account of Gordon's mission to Khartoum and the wider Anglo-Egyptian crisis of 1882–1886 combines memoir, political indictment, and historical reappraisal. Drawing on contemporaneous diary entries and eyewitness observation from both official and unofficial circles, the author argues that British policy in Egypt and the Sudan caused needless suffering, and he writes with a deliberate honesty that admits his own earlier misjudgments. He especially revises his view of Gordon, shifting blame from the man to the officials who sent him, above all Lord Cromer, while seeking to restore Gordon's reputation for readers who knew him only as an imperial agent. The book broadens into a fierce attack on imperialism, contrasting true patriotism, duty, and moral criticism with conquest, finance, and national self-deception. It defends Egypt's dignity, questions annexation after Arabi's defeat, and explores the alternatives of reform, restraint, and constitutional self-government. Figures such as Dufferin, Gladstone, Stead, and Gordon move through a world of diplomacy, journalism, and peace agitation, where the fate of Arabi, the Mahdi, and Egypt's future remain fiercely contested. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.