Khartoum: the ultimate imperial adventure

Sudan, 1883 and the defeat of the 11000 -strong British Hicks Pasha column at Shaykan by the Mahdi- God´s Expected One- sent shockwaves through the Western world. National hero General Gordon was dispatched to evacuate the country but instead found himself trapped in Khartoum and surrounded by a vast army of dervishes. Gordon´s tragic kast stand and Wolseley´s heroic but futile rescue mission led to the fall of the British government. But the British Empire was not to be deprived of its revenge, and fifteen years later in the arid Nubian dust at Omdurman it struck back.