The Blue Nile

Hamish Hamilton 1962

In a modern class of historical travel writing, Moorehead traces the course of the Blue Nile from the Ethipian Highlands, through Sudan and Egypt to the sea, and then begins his historical narrative which starts in the 18th century and ends in 1869. It was a period dominated by four men: James Bruce, the Scot who journeyed to the supposed source of the Blue Nile, and stayed in warring Ethiopia; Napoleon, who, needing military glory to further his political ambitions, led a brilliantly conceived expedition to Egypt; Mohammed Ali, the Turkish viceroy, who sent his son to conquer the Sudan in a ruthless quest for gold and slaves; and Emperor Theodore of Ethiopia, a tyrant who held British subjects captive...