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This book tells the true story behind The English Patient, one of the least known and most extraordinary episodes of the Second World War.In the thirties, the Zerzura Club (named for a lost oasis in the Libyan Desert) met once a year for a dinner at the Café Royal in London. Ostensibly its members were cosmopolitan adventurers indulging a craze for desert travel by motor-car and aeroplane, and searching for the lost oases and ancient cities of a vanished civilisation. In reality they were mapping the desert for military reasons, marking vital wells and checking terrain. The club’s members were drawn from countries that would soon be enemies, and fellowship masked a vicious rivalry.
Mussolini hoped to make Egypt the centrepiece of a new Italian empire, but the British –for whom the Suez Canal was strategically vital – were determined to hold on to that country. When war broke out in 1939, Ralph Bagnold founded the Long Range Desert Group to spy on and disrupt the Axis power’ advance on Cairo under Rommel, while his fellow club member Count Almasy tried to spirit the Egyptian Chief of Staff out of Cairo, and succeeded in inserting German spies. Both were using knowledge and desert craft drawn from the hazardous hunt for the Zerzura Oasis, where each had deceived the other about his true purpose.
In telling this extraordinary story, Saul Kelly draws on interviews with survivors as well as previously unknown documentary material in Britain, Italy, Germany, Hungary and Egypt. His book reads like a thriller by John Buchan or Frederick Forsyth – with one key difference: it is true.
book reviews
- Andrew Roberts, The BBC History Magazine
'Kelly has a superb cast, wide canvas, and great plot, and his writing lives up to them.' - Justin Marozzi, The Spectator
'Kelly's history of the early exploration of the Libyan Desert and the swashbuckling operations of Bagnold and Almasy during the war is a fascinating read, packed with detail.' - Anthony Sattin, The Sunday Times
'Kelly's book, built on primary sources and testimony from Zerzura club members and former intelligence officers, will stand as the definitive account of a gripping rivalry.'
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