The Chitral Campaign

Who, or why, or how or what?' opens one of Edward Lear's limericks 'Is the Akond of Swat?' The answer to the question lies within this book - a newspaperman's account of a British military expedition mounted against Chitral, Swat and Bajour in 1895. The Akond was the religious leader of Swat, an area on India's ever turbulent north-west fronteir, renowned for its religious piety and its jealously preserved 'Purdah' (the word literally means 'curtain') which was kept firmly closed against foreign