British Africa

Surprisingly neglected in accounts of Allied wartime triumphs, in 1941 British and Commonwealth forces completed a stunning and important victory in East Africa against an overwhelmingly superior Italian opponent. A hastily formed British-led force, never larger than 70,000 strong, advanced along two fronts to defeat nearly 300,000 Italian and colonial troops.

David Olusoga's Black and British is a rich and revealing exploration of the extraordinarily long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa. Drawing on new genetic and genealogical research, original records, expert testimony and contemporary interviews, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination and Shakespeare's Othello.

When an SAS team is sent to train government troops in Kamanga, a poverty-stricken and war-torn republic in the dark heart of southern Africa, Geordie Sharp is caught up in the most dangerous and difficult assignment of his career. At the outset of the mission a juju, or witch doctor, predicts that 10 whites are going to die, and as the prediction starts to come true, one by one down they go.