{"title":"G L Steer","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"sealed-and-delivered-book-g-l-steer-9780571255160","title":"Sealed and Delivered","description":"Sealed and Delivered was first published in 1942. In a way, it is a sequel to Caesar in Abyssinia (also reissued in Faber Finds) which covered the Italian invasion of Ethiopia up to May 1936 when the capital, Addis Ababa was occupied. Sealed and Delivered continues the story until the expulsion of the Italians in 1941 and beyond. Richard Pankhurst, in his introduction, writes, 'Ethiopia's history, as Steer saw it, did not however end there, with victory over Italy. When the fighting died down, the first country to e freed in WW2 still faced major problems. Those resulting from the erstwhile invasion included, he said, a still partially operative colour-bar, the complex question of ex-enemy property - and the country's status vis-a-vis Great Britain, its liberator and ally, whose forces ended up occupying the country. Steer believed that Ethiopia itself would solve these problems, and that its independence, soon to be sealed by international treaty, was delivered to its rightful rulers: the Ethiopian people: Sealed and Delivered.'  Both Caesar in Abyssinia and Sealed and Delivered are quite largely autobiographical. That gives them their strength. For Steer writing about Ethiopia was much more than a journalistic assignment, he was a friend of the Emperor's and a partisan for his country. As Nick Rankin has observed, 'the mild Christianity that he inherited from them (his parents) seems to have given him sympathy for the underdog as well as inoculation against totalitarianism.'","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49504876036369,"sku":"GOR007376450","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53237057913105,"sku":"NLS9780571255160","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571255167.jpg?v=1751040957"},{"product_id":"tree-of-gernika-book-g-l-steer-9780571255139","title":"The Tree of Gernika","description":"The Tree of Gernika: a Field Study of Modern War was published in 1938. It is G. L. Steer's masterpiece. Martha Gellhorn famously wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt:  'You must read a book by a man names Steer: it is called The Tree of Gernika. It is about the fight of the Basques - he's the London Times man - and no better book has come out of the war and he says well all the things I have tried to say to you the times I saw you, after Spain. It is beautifully written and true, and few books are like that, and fewer still deal with war. Pleas get it.'  As Paul Preston says in his We Saw Spain Die, 'Martha Gellhorn's judgement has more than stood the test of time.'   In his introduction, Nick Rankin writes.' The Tree of Gernika tells how Euzkadi, the democratic republic that the Basques created in their green homeland by the Bay of Biscay, fought for freedom and decency in an atrocious civil war. After a year of struggle, blockaded by sea, bombed from the air, fighting against overwhelming odds in their own hill, the Basques in the end lost to Franco's forces - but they lost honourably, without resorting to murder, torture and treachery.'   It was Steer who alerted the world to the destruction of Gernika (Basque spelling), Guernica (Spanish spelling). It was the most important dispatch of his life, run by both The Times and The New York Times.   Nick Rankin rightly describes The Tree of Gernika as 'a masterpiece of narrative history and eyewitness reporting by someone close to the key events . . .'","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50913557184785,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50913557643537,"sku":"GOR009059107","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53016562729233,"sku":"GOR012994841","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53237057519889,"sku":"NLS9780571255139","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0571255132.jpg?v=1751104402"},{"product_id":"caesar-in-abyssinia-book-g-l-steer-9780571255153","title":"Caesar in Abyssinia","description":"Caesar in Abyssinia, published in 1936, was the first of G. L. Steer's three books about Italy's invasion, occupation of, and final removal from Ethiopia. Steer wrote the official history The Abyssinian Campaigns (1942) as well as Sealed and Delivered (1942) which is also being reissued in Faber Finds.   Nick Rankin, in his introduction, describes Caesar in Abyssinia as Steer's 'remarkable - and partisan - account of the last great episode of armed colonial conquest in Africa, the Italo-Ethiopian war of 1935-36.' Italy had first tried to meld an Africa Orientale Italina in 1895. It failed with the humiliating defeat at the battle of Adowa in 1896. Mussolini was keen on revenge and creating a new Roman Empire abroad.   In literary terms the war is best known through Evelyn Waugh's Waugh in Abyssinia and Scoop. Steer and Waugh were rivals and could hardly be more different in outlook. Nick Rankin says of their first meeting, 'their trains went in opposite directions, and so did their dispatches and politics.' Waugh championed the Italian cause, Steer the Ethiopian. Steer now seems not only more admirable but more right, too.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52262641172753,"sku":"GOR005300892","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53237058175249,"sku":"NLS9780571255153","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780571255153.jpg?v=1757855722"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-g-l-steer.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}