An Unorthodox Soldier: Peace and War and the Sandline Affair (Paperback)

Tim Spicer has always led an exciting and controversial life. Once one of Britain's leading battalion commanders and now head of Sandline International, one of the world's foremost private military companies, he has spent most of the last 25 years seeking action and adventure in the British Army as an officer in one of its crack regiments, the Scots Guards. Spicer served several tours in Northern Ireland, for which he was awarded an OBE. During the Falklands War he was Operations Officer with the Scots Guards. Before leaving the Army he served with the UN contingent in Bosnia. In this fast-moving account of his life, Tim Spicer describes all the events surrounding the catastrophe in Papua New Guinea, when he was captured at gunpoint and held in captivity - and came away with his life, his men ...and $36 million dollars. Here too is the full truth about the notorious "Arms for Africa" affair -the Sandline Affair of 1996, which tied Robin Cook, the Foreign Office and Customs and Excise in an almighty knot over whether Sandline had broken a UN embargo on supplying arms to the legitimate government-in-exile of Sierra Leone. Spicer's entertaining account of modern soldiering looks at the creation of private military companies - the modern legitimate version of the old mercenaries - and concludes with Tim Spicer's troubled forecast about the dangerous world that lies ahead in the new millennium. For a look at life as it is lived in some of the world's trouble spots, and a glimpse of the intrigue that lies behind the British political scene, this book is a must for every thinking person's bookshelf.