Charles Warren: Royal Engineer in the Age of Empire: by K. Shillington, Bath, Brown Dog Books, 2020, ix –486 pp., 23 Maps, 64 Black and White and 15 Colour Photographs (paperback), ISBN 10: 1839521872 / ISBN 13: 9781839521874.

Readers of the I PEQ i will be familiar with Warren's work in Jerusalem for the Palestine Exploration Fund but may be less familiar with the rest of his life and career. Shillington's treatment of Warren's work in Africa, where he spent most of his military career, is excellent, in that while he shows Warren as a man wholly committed to the imperial project, he also shows, in part through his conflict with Cecil Rhodes, that Warren appears to have recognised certain levels of sovereignty and self-rule as rightful claims of the colonised. Warren instituted numerous reforms, and in retrospect greatly improved the Met, a job which needs repeating periodically in any organisation. [Extracted from the article]