Inside Africa

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This territory comprised the current countries of Central African Republic, the Republic of Congo, Chad and Gabon, and operated from 1910 to 1958, so was nearing its conclusion when Gunther visited. During that time he logged 300,000 miles through 48 African countries, covered wars and coups and managed to preserve some hope. Gunther in his short chapter devoted to French West Africa has treated the subject somewhat inadequately. Gunther’s descriptions and narrations agreeably relieve the fairly heavy doses of outright political statistics.

As soon as you feel the weight of the book in your hands it certainly feels like it's an effort to cover a continent.This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996.

Kipling succeeded in convincing me at least of the heroic work being done by British administrators and soldiers. The Africans'' invites comparison with John Gunther's ''Inside Africa,'' published 30 years ago, when the countries covered in Mr.Ghana gets an indulgent interview with the (black) Prime Minister, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, then a quick side trip to Togoland - British Togoland, which was joined to Gold Coast and is now part of Ghana, and French Togoland - now Togo.

The long section on South Africa is bogged down in politics and race, and individual biographies of prominent people, and for 30 or so pages my attention waned. This section goes deep into British governance, then the Mau-Mau, and covers off Zanzibar and relationship between the Sultan and the British Resident. When I picked this up off my shelf, finally mentally prepared to tackle it, I imagined it to be a book of around 500 pages, judging by the spine thickness. Gunther wrote his classic memoir Death Be Not Proud, published in 1949, to commemorate the courage and spirit of this extraordinary boy.

To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. The British policy is to educate and train the native Africans for self-government, but they hesitate to have a definite date assigned for that purpose. FWA is made up of Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Senegal, French Sudan (now Mali), French Guinea (now Guinea), Haute Volta (French Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso), Dahomey (now Benin) and Niger.

He and Frances Fineman, whom he married in 1927, had a daughter who died four months after her birth in 1929. To explore the gigantic and diverse continent of Africa and to study the inside workings and problems of its vast populations is an appalling undertaking. Great Britain at this point seemed to realize that colonialism was over, yet at this point they seemed to simply be trying to postpone the end indefinitely. People who he views as great men often turned out in reality to be brutal thugs and Africa fell far behind his predictions. There is however a lot of his travel through the many countries, and for me these were some of the most interesting parts!Remains particularly and surprisingly well-preserved overall; tight, bright, clean and strong; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 952 pages; Description: xxiii, 952 p. A chapter on gold and diamonds completed the South Africa section with more vigour, and then a short chapter on 'German' South-West Africa, which is now Namibia.