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Maxwell is best known for Ring of Bright Water, the still selling account of his West Highland seaboard cottage and pet otters. He was also a distinguished travel writer on Iraq and Sicily. This posthumously published book (he died in 1968) is sub-titled The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua, 1893-1956, and is a history of Morocco's tribal dynasty which is informed by his own travels in North Africa. It's a fascinating slice of Moroccan history that is also a substantial chapter in the story of French colonialism. And, considering how far the writing of history has moved on since Maxwell's time, his own style seems remarkably fresh, readable and well-informed. The vividness of that writing is enhanced by lavish pictorial illustration, with 50 colour and 100 hundred black and white relevant photos, both contemporary and archival.

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.

Part 1 Madani El Glaoui: the castle; the cannon; whose king is a child; the time and the country; the defeat of Abd El Aziz; Madani's sultan - Moulay Hafid; the hostages; the beginning of the great Caid Era. Part 2 T'hami El Glaoui: the golden years; the Glaoui empire completed; the image; towards independence; the first march of the Berber warriors; the deposition of Mohammed V; T'hami's hour; the submission of T'hami; the hand of Allah. Part 3 The aftermath: Marrakesh in 1956.