The threat of holy war

John Buchan’s Greenmantle remains a marvellous read, even if its plot is absurd.

John Buchan’s Greenmantle remains a marvellous read, even if its plot is absurd. Who could credit a story about German attempts, headed by the unlovely Kaiser Wilhelm and the glamorous and suitably ruthless Hilda von Einem, to stir up a world-wide Muslim holy war against the Allies during the first world war and ultimately build a vast German empire stretching to India itself? Now Sean McMeekin shows that fiction, after all, was not so far from the truth, and he makes the most of what is a very good story.

He starts in the late 19th century with the construction of the Berlin to Baghdad railway. It drew in some of Germany’s greatest engineers and sucked up huge sums of German money, and in return was meant to spread German influence and sell German goods throughout the decaying Ottoman empire.