Mavericks : Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One by Nick Higham

The forgotten story of a group of British mavericks who took on an impossible mission - and survived against all odds to tell their extraordinary tales.

1918. The First World War is drawing to a close and regimes are collapsing across Europe. Amid the chaos, British officials plot a daring campaign to send an unlikely band of soldiers, diplomats and spies to the volatile shores of the Caspian Sea.

Their mission: stop the advancing Turks, hold back the Bolsheviks and secure the vital supply of oil from Baku. Drawing on personal diaries, memoirs and once-secret government archives, Mavericks is a page-turning story of boldness and intrigue, set in a forgotten corner of the Great War where rules were made to be broken.