Yet this was a man well versed in European history and in biblical lore, capable of telling the smelting missionaries, ‘If God allows it to succeed, it will be well; if not, it also will be well,’ while at the same time the background was full of the thudding sound of hands and feet being lopped from his subjects by executioners. But of course the Great Powers didn’t mind that. It was when he loaded white missionaries with chains and retreated with them, and the cannon, to his impregnable mountain fortress in the interior that intervention came.

It came from British India. The troops built two piers, eight bridges, laid a railway, dug out two reservoirs, climbed over 7,000 feet, and blew the impregnable mountain fortress to bits. The missionaries were released, and Theodore shot himself. This military intervention is probably the single most dramatic illustration of British power, and expertise, in the 19th century, for, having landed on 2 January 1868, the troops, under Lord Napier, were all gone by 18 June.

This is a remarkable narrative. It is also an infuriating one, for the author sacrifices everything to what is basically a splendid strip cartoon. I wanted to know its context, the history of this extraordinary country, its economy, its geography and its population. What happened to the people when the mediaeval armies were rampaging up and down?

All I got were tantalising little glimpses, like that of the Emperor among the parchments of his library but with no glass in the windows, or asking gravely whether there was such a place as Dahomey, or whether it might be possible to get a steam plough. Again the moment of humour in the ill-fated letter to Victoria, when, after describing himself as ‘the son of David, of Solomon, King of Kings’, he writes, ‘I am not worthy of corresponding with you who are great. However, a great person and the ocean are the same, they can bear anything.’ It is a lovely little joke.

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