Biafra book launch

Date: Thursday 19^th January, 6-8pm

Venue: Brunei Suite, SOAS

Book launch with author Michael Gould and Kaye Whiteman (journalist), Frederick Forsyth (author), Dipo Salimonu (political commentator & CEO at Ateriba) responding. 

Chair: Professor Dennis Judge

In the summer of 1968, reports of starvation in the West African secessionist Republic of Biafra transformed the Nigerian Civil War into an international media event. Using recently discovered archival records and the personal recollections of the key players, Michael Gould challenges many of the views and perceptions held of the conflict at the time. Little has been written about the war during the last forty years and as Anthony Kirk-Greene (Emeritus Fellow of St. Antony's College, Oxford) states this book stands as the best analysis yet published.

About the author

Michael Gould has lived and worked in Nigeria over the last fifty years. He first met Ojukwu and Gowon when they were young army officers and he was still a student. In the mid eighties he set up an NGO in Eastern Nigeria. He is an honorary chief of the Igbo people. He had limited knowledge of the country's civil war until he wrote a short dissertation on the subject in 2000. He subsequently read for a PhD in African History at SOAS, focusing on the Biafran War. This book is the result of his research into the conflict.