Blood in the Sand

The third in Ian Hernon's 'Forgotten Wars' trilogy focuses on colonial conflicts in farflung places that have somehow been lost from the nation's collective memory.

Some were mere skirmishes, others major campaigns, but all are astonishing stories of courage, occasional cowardice, dogged determination and endurance, incompetence and confusion.

They were fought in some of the most inhospitable places on earth - from the high Himalayas to the dense jungles of the West Africa - against both 'savage' and 'civilized' foes.

Hernon makes few moral judgements on the bloody aspects of Empire building apart from recording, often in their own words, the breathtaking heroism of participants on all sides.

He treats each war with a reporter's eye, chronicling what happened, why and to whom. These are thrilling stories, often with a resonance to today's fractured conflicts: one Queen Mother of the Sikhs conspired with the British to destroy her own army, and saw her wish come true as a river ran red; in Sierra Leone, opposition to a poll tax sparked bloody insurrection; an Irish Republican army, veterans of the US civil war, tried - and dismally failed - to invade British Canada; and a headlong attack by British infantry proved to be a bigger blunder than the Charge of the Light Brigade.