ABSTRACT
The idea of the “Great Game” fascinated Winston Churchill. The phrase was immortalised by Rudyard Kipling in Kim and fi rst coined by Captain Arthur Conolly and Colonel Charles Stoddart, British army offi cers facing execution in Bokhara in 1842 for their part in the intrigue that cloaked the political ambitions of Britain and Russia in Central and South Asia. The “Great Game,” an ongoing and frequently dangerous enterprise undertaken to protect and secure the interests of the British Raj, continued throughout the 19th century and greatly impressed Winston Churchill when he was attached to the Malakand Field Force as a correspondent in 1897. The horse-mounted men patrolled the northwest heights of the Hindu Kush on what was then the border between India and Afghanistan and out-fl anked and outwitted recalcitrant tribes, whose displacement was often based on information gleaned from local bazaars.
