A FORMER reporter for the Chard & Ilminster News has written a book about an Ethiopian prince – a boy who passed through the Chard area on his third day in England.
Andrew Heavens’ book, The Prince and the Plunder, tells the story of Prince Alamayu, who was brought to Britain after British troops defeated his father, Ethiopia’s Emperor Tewodros II, in 1868.
The troops also brought back piles of treasure and loot – gold crowns, illuminated manuscripts, sacred carvings - which is now dispersed across Britain and beyond in museums and libraries and cupboards and private collections.
The book, published by The History Press, is partly a treasure hunt as it traces down the plunder in its modern-day hiding places and uses it to tell the story of the boy prince who went on to spend the rest of his short life in Britain.
Andrew said: “There was a thrilling moment when I was deep into the research on the book, and suddenly discovered that Alamayu travelled through my old home.”
After the battles, Alamayu was put on a boat to Plymouth, and then two days later, on July 16, 1868, put on a steam train to Portsmouth and then the Isle of Wight to visit Queen Victoria.
You can follow his journey in the archives. He got the 10.25 am train from Plymouth’s Millbay Station, got off at Exeter St David’s, where he was interviewed by a reporter from the local newspaper, then got onto another service to Portsmouth, passing through Honiton, Axminster, Chard Road station, Crewkerne and onto Yeovil and Sherbourne.
Andrew added: “It is a small moment that will pass most readers by. But it meant a lot to me as it brought two parts of my life together.
“It was amazing to think that he would have looked out at some of the places that I got to know and love more than 130 years later.”
Andrew worked at the Chard & Ilminster News from 1993 to 1995 while he was on the Southern Newspapers training scheme.
He went on to work for other newspapers, including the Wolverhampton Express & Star and the Financial Times, before moving to East Africa in 2004 and becoming the Ethiopia and Sudan correspondent for Reuters news agency.
It was there he started digging into the story of Britain’s largely forgotten military campaign in Ethiopia and found the prince.
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