Running the show - Stephanie Williams

From Sierra Leone to Fiji, Australia to Sri Lanka, Running the Show is a vivid portrait of empire and of men from another age, who formed so much of the world we live in today.

Running the Show is the story of ordinary men, who in their way, were heroes. Made up of episodes from the lives of governors serving around the British Empire, it presents a kaleidoscope of people, places and events - and stories of how, for better or worse, attempts were made to bring order to often chaotic situations.

Drawing on an astonishing cache of Colonial Office dispatches, private letters, diaries and memoirs, governors recall their strange experiences, parade their eccentricities and complain about dysentery as they plan new towns, build railways, create assemblies, draft laws, negotiate with tribesmen, set up schools and hospitals, and introduce sanitation systems in the farthest reaching corners of the world.