Arthur Glyn Leonard

Born in Ireland in August 1856, Arthur Glyn Leonard served with the 2nd Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment and saw action in India, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Sudan, where he was badly injured during the Mahdist revolt. He later joined the British South Africa Company Police and commanded a troop that accompanied the pioneer column into Mashonaland in 1890.

Leonard brought those experiences into his writing. How We Made Rhodesia drew on diary entries and letters from his time in southern Africa, while The Lower Niger and Its Tribes established his reputation as an ethnographic observer. He also wrote The Camel, Its Uses and Management and Islam, Her Moral and Spiritual Value, showing the wide range of his interests.

His work is valuable both for what it records and for the world it reflects. Leonard wrote from within the age of empire, yet some later commentators have noted that his views did not always fit neatly with those of many of his colonial contemporaries. Even so, his books are best read as products of their time: detailed, often vivid, and shaped by the assumptions and debates of the period.