Blood and Sand was one of Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novels written for adults. Based on real events, it is set in The Ottoman Empire, the ‘Sick Old Man of Europe’. Scot Thomas Keith, a former apprentice gunsmith from Edinburgh, is a young soldier with the 78th Highlanders in the Napoleonic wars. Turkish forces capture him in 1807 in the Nile delta With no reason to rejoin the English forces, he is persuaded to become an officer in the Egyptian Viceroy’s army. Training for desert warfare he witnesses the fellowship and piety of the Bedouin troop, and converts to Islam. He eventually rises to become Emir of the holy city of Medina, in a society which is subtle but violent. Moving between the dignified simplicity of the Bedouin camp and the scheming, scented ante-chambers of the Viceroy’s palace in Cairo the novel that explores the loyalty between men which helps make warfare bearable.

• More stories of Rosemary Sutcliff’s books here