Gleichen Alfred Edward Wilfred Count (2 results)

First edition. Photogravure frontispiece and fifteen other plates and full-page illustrations, numerous illustrations to the text, both half-tones from photographs and line-drawn after sketches by the author, one folding map coloured in outline, and a folding plan. 8vo. Frontispiece a little loose, some light marginal browning, otherwise very good in the original royal blue cloth, gilt, slightly spotted, spine thumbed head and tail. xii, 364pp. London, Edward Arnold, In the aftermath of the Italian's defeat at Adowa the European Powers rushed to establish advantageous treaty arrangements with the newly confident Ethiopians. Having been on Special Service in Sudan, Gleichen was attached to Rennell Rodd's mission to the Emperor.   This copy inscribed, "To Lady Naylor Leyland, with the author's warmest compliments." Lady Naylor-Leyland was the wife of Capt. Sir Herbert Scarisbricke Naylor-Leyland of the 2nd Life Guards, Conservative MP for Colchester, 1892-5, and a Liberal and Home Ruler from 1895, being MP for the Southport Division from 1898 until his death the following year.

Second edition, revised, of this painstaking War Office handbook, a guide for Kitchener's invading Anglo-Egyptian army in its advance on Khartoum to avenge Gordon. First published in 1897, this is one of 750 copies put out in July 1898, updated with the "latest information", and the most current map of Khartoum and Omdurman, prepared by Slatin Pasha. Scarce, with just 11 institutional locations worldwide. As the country had been under the Mahdi's rule since 1885 there had been "no possibility of obtaining route reports and sketches of the country to be traversed on a future expedition to Omdurman". In the absence of fresh intelligence, the War Office was compelled to analyse more minutely existing reports from earlier campaigns and surveys, as well as traveller's accounts; routes reported here are credited to such as Eduard Rüppel, Frank James, G. A, Schweinfurth, and James Grant. Having seen service with the Guards Camel Regiment in the Sudan campaign of 1884-5, with the Egyptian army in the Dongala campaign in 1896, and as Rennell Rodd's intelligence officer on his mission to Menelik in Ethiopia in 1897, Gleichen was far and away the most suitable officer to carry out the task. This copy with the ownership inscription of Sidney Peel (1870-1938), datelined Cairo 1903, on the front free endpaper. After service with the Imperial Yeomanry in the Second Anglo-Boer War, memorialized by him in Trooper 8008 IY (1901), Peel went to Egypt as a newspaper correspondent. In 1904 he published an account of developments in the region, The Binding of the Nile and the New Soudan (1904), and he "began a business association with Sir Ernest Cassel, who was active in business and financial affairs in Egypt. This led to Peel's obtaining a number of important posts in the City of London, notably chairman of the London committee of the National Bank of Egypt (which had been founded by Cassel) and vice-president of the Morocco State Bank (also founded by Cassel)" (ODNB). Following war service on the Western Front, 1914-17, he was recalled to London as a financial adviser to the Foreign Office, in which capacity he attended the Versailles peace conference. Bookplate of the renowned East Africa collector Humphrey Winterton to the interior of the box. Octavo. With 6 maps and plans, 3 full-page, one of these to the text, one other sketch map to text, and two folding lithographic maps in end-pocket, "Skeleton Route Map", and "Khartum and Omdurman. from Map compiled by Col. R. C. Slatin, 1898" Original brownish orange cloth, flexible boards, lettered in black on the front. Housed in black quarter morocco, plush lined, book-style drop-back box, lettered in gilt on the spine. Externally a little rubbed and bumped - "some service wear" - internally lightly toned, a few light pencil marginal markings, but clean and sound, a very good copy, handsomely presented.