Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua 1893-1956

Set in the medieval city of Marrakesh and the majestic kasbahs of the High Atlas mountains, Lords of the Atlas tells the extraordinary story of the Madani and T'hami el Glaoui, warlord brothers who carved out a feudal fiefdom in southern Morocco in the early twentieth century. Quislings of the French colonial administration, they combined the aggression of gangland mobsters with the opulence of hereditary Indian princes, and ruled with a mixture of flamboyance and terror. On returning from the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, T'hami ordered the severed heads of his enemies to be mounted on his gates. Yet in 1956, when the French left Morocco, the Glaoua regime toppled like a pack of cards.

Gavin Maxwell was born in the south-west of Scotland and was educated at a succession of schools before taking a degree in Estate Management at Oxford. He served with the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War, after which he bought the island of Soay. As well as his famous otter books - Ring of Bright Water and The Rocks Remain - he also wrote the critically acclaimed People of the Reeds, an account of the marsh Arabs of southern Iraq. He died in 1969.