The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was a huge and bloody struggle, a devil's wind of retribution and death that swept across the jungles, hills and parched plains of the Indian sub-continent. The author vividly recaptures the experience and atmosphere of the time - the smell of battle, the tired men and forced marches, the sieges and the appalling massacres - all enacted beneath the relentless, cruel heat of the Indian sun. It was a war of treachery and incompetence, desperately fought without mercy on either side, but a war of heroism and endurance. It threw up remarkable personalities: Nicholson, who recaptured Delhi; Henry Lawrence, the defender of Lucknow; Holy Havelock, the bible-thumping general who relieved Lucknow only to find himself trapped; and the dour uncompromising Colin Campbell, who was sent from England to return India to sanity. The Mutiny transpired to be the first significant crack in the solidly-built, rigid structure of the British Empire and at its conclusion, and thereafter, the British were never able to feel quite as secure again.