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 1914, educated at Stowe and Oxford and served in the Scots Guard during the Second World War. Invalided out in 1944 he bought the Island of Soay and set up his Basking Shark fishery there - the subject of his first book, Harpoon at a Venture, (1952). Other books include A Reed Shaken by the Wind (1958), an account of the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, The House of Elrig (1956), an autobiography of his childhood, and his world famous West Highland books about otters: Ring of Bright Water (1960), The Rocks Remain (1963) and Raven Seek Thy Brother (1969). He died in 1969.