‘They sure did, in the 1830s. The most ardent imperialists of them all, playing their Great Game carving up all the territory they could snatch things didn’t go so well. Of all the military campaigns in British history, their first attempt at Afghanistan was one of the most inept, incompetent and disastrous ever. Fifteen thousand troops waltzing in with more than double that number of servants, complete with brass bands, polo ponies and packs of foxhounds for the officers’ entertainment, and so many supplies it took thirty thousand camels to carry them. One regiment needed two camels just to transport the officers’ cigars, while another brigadier had sixty of them loaded with his personal belongings.’

‘Tally ho,’ Wolf said, twirling an imaginary moustache. ‘I say, what, what, what? Dash it, where’s Jeeves with my champagne? What a bunch of twats.’

‘You might say they had it coming,’ Madison said. ‘In the winter of 1842 the 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers that was all that was left of their entire invasion force retreated from Kabul in a death march that only one European survived. They’d achieved literally nothing, except lead thousands of men to their deaths. Afghanistan brushed them off like insects. Thirty-five years later they came back for a second attempt, and they were a little more successful, but at such a high cost in lives that in the end it was decided the best strategy was just to leave the place alone. It just wasn’t worth it.’

‘Didn’t stop us coming back for more later, though, did it?’ Wolf said sourly. ‘Silly bastards. Don’t we ever learn?’

‘Seems like too much to ask that we should,’ Madison said. ‘Time after time, whoever seizes control of this country gets their butt kicked sooner or later as someone else comes and takes it from them. A century after the Brits left for the second time, it was the Russians’ turn to try their luck and wind up with their very own Vietnam, ten years of pointless warfare, fifteen thousand corpses and massive economic damage. Soon after they retreated in tatters, the Soviet Union crashed and burned. Like, whoops, there goes another one.’

‘Graveyard of empires, all right,’ Wolf said.

‘Then came the Americans.’ Madison gave a derisive snort. ‘The less said about that, the better. And ours won’t be the last attempt to end in spectacular failure. Dad used to say that Afghanistan was like some giant impossible mountain that nobody had ever managed to climb, or some vast desert that nobody had ever been able to cross.’

‘And yet he kept trying,’ Ben said.