Nick Higham: Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One

Based on his book of the same title, the talk will look at the daring campaign to send an unlikely band of maverick soldiers, diplomats and spies to the chaotic region around the Caspian Sea as the First World War drew to a close. Their mission: to block the advance of the Turks, to hold back the rising Bolsheviks and prevent a Turkish-inspired jihad overwhelming India, and to secure the vital supply of oil from Baku.

Nick Higham is a writer and former journalist who spent nearly thirty years as a BBC correspondent. His history of London's water, The Mercenary River, was published in 2022. Mavericks is his second book.