Why the heck not?

Philip Hensher recounts how a handful of British mercenaries in the 1960s, headed by the Buchanesque Jim Johnson (pictured above), trained a rag-tag force of Yemeni tribesmen to defeat the full might of the Egyptian army in a conflict that Nasser later referred to as ‘my Vietnam’

‘Enormous fun and a tremendous adventure,’ one of the participants called it afterwards, voicing the sentiments of every British soldier running amok since the beginning of time.