The scramble for Africa astonished everyone. In 1880 most of the continent was still ruled by Africans, and barely explored. By 1902, five European Powers (and one extraordinary individual) had grabbed almost the whole continent, giving themselves 30 new colonies and protectorates and 10 million square miles of new territory, and 110 million bewildered new subjects. In a tour de force of historical narrative, Thomas Pakenham has written the first full-scale history of this extraordinary episode. It took him 10 years and involved trips to 22 African countries including research in Britain, France, Belgium and Germany.

This is historical narrative on the grand scale, cross-cut between Europe at the height of its power and Africa in its political infancy, covering a vast terrain and including huge cast of characters, yet as vivid and fast-moving as a novel.

Thomas Pakenham, the eldest son of the Earl and Countess of Longford, was born in 1933 and educated at Ampleforth and Oxford. He spent eight years researching and writing The Boer War (first published in 1979), including several months of travelling in South Africa, and mastered the original sources in Dutch and Afrikaans as well as English. He is also the author of The Year of Liberty, The Scramble for Africa, which won the W.H. Smith Award and the Alan Paton Award, and Meetings with Remarkable Trees.