Mavericks

Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One

De: Nick Higham

The forgotten story of a group of British mavericks who took on an impossible mission with a daring and fearless approach.

As the First World War drew to a close and regimes began to collapse across Europe, British officials plotted a daring campaign to send an unlikely band of maverick soldiers, diplomats and spies to the chaotic region around the Caspian Sea. Their mission: to block the advance of the Turks, to hold back the rising Bolsheviks and prevent a Turkish-inspired jihad overwhelming India, and to secure the vital supply of oil from Baku.

It was an almost impossible task, but Mavericks tells the gripping stories of the remarkable and enterprising characters at the centre of it all, who would be tested to the limit. There was Lionel Dunsterville, the inspiration for Kipling’s Stalky and commander of the expedition; Ranald MacDonell, a Scottish aristocrat and diplomat who smuggled millions of roubles for the war effort; Edward Noel, a seemingly indestructible soldier who was held hostage for sixty-five days in horrific conditions; Toby Rawlinson, the younger brother of one of Britain’s most senior generals and a brilliant inventor; and Reginald Teague-Jones, a spy who printed his own currency and would eventually emerge as an author at the age of ninety-nine.

Drawing on personal diaries, memoirs and once-secret government archives, Mavericks brings to life a cast of eccentric heroes who survived against all odds to tell their extraordinary tales. This is a propulsive story of boldness and intrigue, set in a forgotten corner of the Great War where the rules were made to be broken.

©2025 Nick Higham (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Reseñas de la Crítica

A hugely engaging tale of oil, Empire, espionage and vanity. Nick Higham tells the story of a forgotten campaign that is peppered with characters who seem to have sprung from the pages of a Boys Own Adventure. A reminder too, that history is filled with chancers and rogues and shaped by the unreliable memoirs that they leave behind (Otto English, author of FAKE HISTORY)

Adventure, high jinks, violence: five eccentric British spies. A kaleidoscope of colourful lives, lived dangerously - and with style. A wildly exciting game (Kate Adie, former BBC Chief News Correspondent and bestselling author of THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS)

Who better to send across Central Asia to secure oilfields at the height of the Russian Revolution than upper class mavericks whose early exploits had inspired Kipling? These unlikely characters wanted their exploits remembered, and in Nick Higham they have found the storyteller they deserve. He weaves a compelling story from unreliable memoirs. An account full of ripping yarns, but the author warns: ‘Don’t expect them all to be true' (David Loyn, former BBC International Development Correspondent and author of THE LONG WAR)