Tipperary-born, Victorian adventurer William Francis Butler is ripe for discovery at a time of changing definitions of what it means to be Irish. This fascinating biography describes an atypical Irishman, Bonapartist and O'Connellite in sympathy, who had a dazzling career in the British army. Butler's life encompassed treks across Canada's prairies in the 1870s (when he founded the Mounties); Gladstone's 1884-5 attempt to rescue Gordon from Khartoum; co-respondency in the sensational 1886 London divorce case involving 'sex-goddess' Lady Colin Campbell; command of the imperial forces in South Africa 1898-9; a political career as 1904 Dublin Home Rule Party and 1905 Leeds Liberal Party candidate, and 1908 election to senator in the new National University of Ireland. He also wrote fourteen books - among them the bestselling Red Cloud, about the Plains Indians, and The Great Lone Land, a Canadian travel classic. His wife, artist Elizabeth Butler (nee Thompson), was a celebrated scene-painter; and his friend, the flamboyant Dubliner Garnet Wolseley, became one of the dominant figures of the British military hierarchy during the scramble for Africa. William Francis Butler: A Life portrays a sympathetic, anti-jingoistic figure, whose public ambitions were tempered by a concern for the underdog and a late-developing, Parnellite sense of Irish nationalism. Maps, photographs, engravings and paintings illustrate this intriguing contribution to Irish, British, North American and African histories.