Description
Nyasaland in the World War, 1914-1918 by Hector Livingston Duff, edited and annotated by Melvin E. Page
Hector Livingston Duff was a career colonial civil servant, yet wanted as well to claim his familial military heritage. Both of these traditions inform his Great War memoir, written in 1920, revised over three decades, and now published for the first time.
The Great War in Africa Association offers this book as a compliment to its previous publications presenting a variety of insights on the experiences of Nyasaland Protectorate residents – African, European and Asian – during World War One and World War Two.
* Peter Charlton, Cinderella’s Soldiers: The Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve
* T. Cullen Young, Nyasaland Operations during the World War, 1914-1918
* Melvin E. Page, Chiwaya War Voices: Malawian Oral Histories of the Great War in Africa
* Melvin E. Page, Chiwaya War Echoes: Malawian Oral Histories of a Second World War and after
The editor, historian Melvin E Page – a former Fulbright Scholar at Chancellor College in Zomba – has been researching and writing about the impact of World War One, and other topics concerning Malawi’s past, since 1972.
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David Thomson reviews the book for the Society of Malawi Journal, May 2026, vol 79, no 1, pp 66-68: ‘Professor Page has rescued from obscurity a valuable and lengthy memoir of Nyasaland’s (now Malawi’s) involvement in the First World War… Page has from his own deep knowledge and research of this period provided an invaluable introduction on the fate of Duff’s manuscript and extensive footnotes on it from a wide range of sources, not least his own book ‘The Chiwaya War’…