CHARLES WARREN : Royal Engineer in the Age of Empire

The life of Charles Warren Royal Engineer is a compelling story, full of action, conflict, triumph and disaster, with reputations gained and lost.

All set against the background of an expanding British Empire.

It is a tale of secrecy, Freemasonry and pioneering archaeology as the young Lt Warren, still only in his twenties, tunnelled under the Holy City of Jerusalem in search of evidence of the Temple of Solomon and Herod the Great. A man of high principle and dogged determination Warren thrived on a challenge: searching for lost British spies in the desert of the Exodus, or publically calling out the rapacious colonialism of Cecil Rhodes.

Later, in different circumstances, he ordered the arrest of Winston Churchill. Although thrice knighted for his many achievements, Warren is most widely remembered as the controversial Metropolitan Police Commissioner who failed to catch ‘Jack the Ripper’.

In the end he faced the supreme challenge in the Anglo-Boer War, becoming the scapegoat for one of Britain’s greatest military disasters, the Battle of Spion Kop. In this new biography, the first for 80 years, historian and biographer Kevin Shillington delves into the records and presents a reassessment of Warren’s reputation.