The phrase ‘The Northwest Frontier’ sounds so bland, but it belies its strategic importance in the Great Game played out between Great Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia and ultimately India. It describes the border region between Afghanistan and present-day Pakistan, dominated by the vast peaks of the Hindu Kush and ruled by powerful tribes who even now bow to no government.  It was seen as the gateway to India; to be defended by the British whatever the cost.

William Hough, a Major in the Bengal Infantry, in A Narrative of the March and Operations of the Army of the Indus, Calcutta (1840), describes the successful British campaign in the First Afghan War to restore Shah Shujah to the throne of Afghanistan. This move was in response to the perceived threat, supposedly backed by Russia, of Zaman Shah invading India via the Northwest Frontier and kicking the British out of India. A scarce book, with Library Hub giving BL and Oxford only, the present copy is further distinguished by the author’s presentation inscription to Colonel Sir Claude Martine Wade, the go-between for Britain and Shah Shujah.