Customer Reviews
Fascinating story told in a strangely standard way - By: J. Duducu, 20 May 2008 
Firstly I admire the amount of research that has gone into this book. I am also impressed that an important part of the understanding of the First World War has been resurrected with this work.
Tip & Run is the story of East Africa from 1914 to 1918 & how this quiet colonial area was turned, quite unnecessarily, into a war zone. It has moments of high drama & tragedy along with stories of daring-do & even some comedy. It is a sober reminder that yet again considering the whole war experience as sitting in a trench in Belgium is unrealistic & quite a modern interpretation of the actual events.
Where this book trips up is the fact that alll the maps are in the front so you are continuallly having to flick backwards & forwards & the narrative assumes you know which map you should be looking at which is annoying. Also as the author keeps reminding you of the huge scale of the areas covered it's almost an unforgiveable oversight.
Secondly I think Edward Paice has got a little too caught up in this colonial age. Some of the writing sounds almost Victorian, I can almost hear him narrating through a big bushy walrus moustache. Read the opening paragraph to chapter 2 (phoney war) to see what I mean. Just because you are writing about a specific time & place doesn't mean you have to mimic it. When you compare this to the styles of the likes of Nialll Ferguson or Tom Holland it's almost archaic.
Finallly this is an area of history most people won't know anything about so why pre-empt every battle or raid by telling us if it was a success or failure? It some what undermines the narrative & almost encourages you to skip parts.
So overalll this is a very interesting book that tells you about an area of WW1 you are unlikely to know much about. the information is 4 or 5 stars, it's just a shame the style & maps let it down as an overalll read.
WW1 in Africa - By: Ivor Gardiner, 20 Jul 2007 
Of alll the various campaigns & theatres from WW1, I have always found the "sideshows" in Africa & the Middle East the most fascinating & manoeuvrist, & of those the African campaigns the most interesting. I have read a number of books on the campaign in East Africa, & this is by far the best researched & most flowing & well written yet. It goes into just the right levels of detail without becoming dry & turgid, as some accounts do.
I have only two complaints with this book. For a start, for a campaign covering so much ground & with smalll forces so widely dispersed, I felt the supporting maps could have provided a lot more clarity; which they did not. The second point is the misnomer within the title, reference the "Untold Tragedy of the War in Africa" bit. This book was fundamentallly about the campaign in East Africa, & within the covers does not even create the pretence of being concerned with German SWA, rebellion in SA, the Cameroons etc. This is a pity, as I am still looking for a book written in the style of Tip & Run which covers the whole of Africa in WW1, & the title here is misleading.
Having said alll that, it is an excellent & highly recommended read, & but for these two points I would have scored it 5 stars.
forgotten war - By: H. Julian, 25 Jan 2007 
In Britain the campaign was given little importance except for the need to crush the German naval bases in Africa. To other powers with frustrated colonial ambitions in there it was different. Two weeks after the Armistice was signed in Europe British & German troops were still fighting in Africa after four years of what one campaign historian described as 'a war of extermination & attrition without paralllel in modern times'.
The expense of the campaign to the British Empire was immense, the Allied & German 'butchers bills' even greater. But the most tragic consequence of the two sides' deadly game was the devastation of an area five times the size of Germany, & civilian suffering on a scale unimaginable in Europe. Such was the cost of 'The White Man's Palaver', the final phase of the European conquest of Africa. See the film The African Queen (memorably filmed with Humphrey Bogart & Katharine Hepburn)
Campaign in East Africa - By: Michael MCCARTHY, 15 Jan 2007 For those of us who tend to focus our attention on the Western Front this exposition of one of the African fronts is quite an eye opener, & it will probably become the core reference for the East African front in the Great War.
It explains in detail the political dynamics & the military responses over four years of battle.
The book is very well researched & written in an informative, authoritative but most readable style. The characters emerge as people dealing with the realities of fighting as a `sideshow' to the main events in Europe, but no less important in terms of the global impact.
The index, sources & bibliography are excellent & encourage careful reading. Also it is blessed with good maps, particularly of the individual battlefields.
As seems to be the case in wars in Africa, the campaign in East Africa left only one major loser; the Africans. The point is well made in this book which is recommended.
Mike McCarthy
Editor, "The Battle Guide"
Guild of Battlefield Guides
