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Geoffrey Kemp and Robert E. Harkavy, Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997). Pp. 508. $52.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.

Although his imperial instincts could not condone the Egyptian nationalists, his thirty years of experience in Sudan, Egypt, and Arabia convinced him that more was to be gained by the personal rather than the official mind. Consequently, when he argued that Sad Zaghlul, the leader of the nationalists (wafd), should accompany Prime Minister Rushdi for talks in London, Wingate's services were no longer needed nor wanted, and he left the Nile Valley on 21 January 1919, never to return. Daly succinctly sums up Wingate's demise. "Thus the main point Wingate was to raise in London [inclusion of members of the wafd in the Egyptian delegation] had been rejected before he left Cairo, and for reasons that inextricably linked the political with the personal" (p. 287). Exiled to his home in Dunbar, Wingate spent as many years as he had in Sudan and Egypt worrying about finances, keeping up appearances, and obtaining invitations to the functions of a royalty in decline. Few had done more to superintend the fortunes of Britain in the Nile Valley during tumultuous times, but until Daly placed him in perspective his epitaph was the swirl of the bagpipes and drums of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders attending to his remains as the senior general in the British Army through the empty streets of Dunbar. This is a splendid book. Thoroughly researched, as one would expect, but graced by insightful and moving passages, not out of affection for Wingate but out of the sincere appreciation for an honorable if tedious man who was one of the primary designers of Britain in the Middle East and who hoped to establish the sound and sensible good government of the peoples of the Nile Valley. The Sirdar will probably not find much of an audience among Egyptians or Sudanese at the end of the 20th century, who have not displayed much interest in the imperial past. Certainly, one would expect considerable curiosity in Britain, with its long and emotional ties with Sudan and Egypt, and among those who are rediscovering the British Empire amid the monuments to nationalism.