num_pages: 320
description: ﻿The personality and career of General Gordon were extraordinary even among those of Victorian heroes of Empire. He went from Sebastopol and the Redan to action against Chinese rebels and East African slavers; from governorships and commands all over Africa to the Sudan and finally to that unnecessary death by the Nile. As the Dictionary of National Biography characteristically states, 'His memory is perpetuated by statues in London, Chatham and Khartoum and by the Gordon Boys' Homes.'What drove him? Imperialism, religion, ambition, do-goodery? The image persists of Lytton Strachey's toping, neurotically Christian defender of Khartoum. The truth is partly there - but in fact the reality was more interesting, more full of achievement and more odd. Charles Chenevix Trench presents us with a full portrait of this eccentric servant of Empire - a volatile, chain-smoking fundamentalist, impossible to his colleagues and anathema to his superiors. His major biography is based on an extensive study of contemporary sources and Gordon's own papers, many of them hitherto unused.
language: English
title: Charley Gordon: An Eminent Victorian Reassessed
publisher: Allen Lane