The Last Englishmen: Love, War, and the End of Empire

This is an engrossing work of narrative history and biography that focuses on the decline of the British Empire in India, centered around two English brothers and a painter.

The story follows John Auden (a pioneering Himalayan geologist) and Michael Spender (the first to map the North Face of Everest)—older brothers to the literary figures W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender. The two men compete professionally for a place on a major Everest expedition and personally for the love of a painter, Nancy Sharp. Set against the backdrop of Calcutta, London, the Himalayas, and the looming threat of World War II, the book illuminates a generation obsessed with a romantic, imperial ideal. It details the lives of explorers, writers, artists, and spies, tracing the end of empire and the beginning of a new world order.