Philip Hensher - The Mulberry Empire : a fictional look at the British involvement in 19th century Afghanistan

Philip Hensher is an author, academic, critic and a past Booker Prize judge.

I spoke to him when his novel The Mulberry Empire was first published. It's a huge wide-screen historical novel about an attempted British invasion of Afghanistan. 

Although it is fiction the novel puts the plight of the country in an unhappy perspective.