The famous imagination of Rider Haggard - author of King Solomon's Mines and She - could scarcely have invented the adventures of his own family: ten siblings whose lives and achievements around the globe stand as an emblem of Britain at the height of Empire.
After a century of eclipse by Rider, we at last meet Will, the urbane diplomat who paved the way for his brothers; Bazett, the black sheep of the family who eventually drifted on to the shores of Stevenson's Samoa; Alfred, the intellectual Indian Civil Servant whose ambitions led him to Africa and into conflict with Cecil Rhodes himself; Jack, the moody sailor and Consul who fed Rider with wild stories from some of the most God-forsaken places on Earth; Andrew, the amorous and sporting soldier, Colonel in the Egyptian Army, whose adventures stretched from glittering Cairo to rustic British Columbia; and Arthur, the patriot, a veteran of the Sudan campaign and the Second Boer War who devoted himself to founding clubs and employment for servicemen.
Of three sisters the eldest, Ella, married a stalwart country parson and became an anchor for the family; Cecilia was matched to an engineer whose business fed the machines of Empire; and Mary became the doyenne of the Corps Diplomatique in Tokyo.
Marshalling a huge inheritance of papers, novels, poems, letters and journals, Victoria Manthorpe weaves a graphic tapestry of the British Empire and portrays one famous Victorian family whose careers epitomized imperial lives.