The turbulant three decades of British rule over Palestine, known as the Mandate, is one of the great dramas of British imperial history and remains highly controversial to this day, some 50 years after the last British High Commissioner left Jerusalem. Whether civil servants, teachers, soldiers and missionaries, the British of the Mandate lived through an extraordinary, transforming personal adventure. This text depicts their often poignant story, written largely in their own words, with honesty, humour and often bitterness, against a background of tragic and violent events. Their letters home, diaries and memoirs describe British landscapes, cultural affinities, misunderstandings and feelings for Arabs or Jews, accomplishments and mishaps and a strong sense of imperial mission coupled with an often sorrowful awareness of human limitations and the folly of unrealistic expectations.