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Prince Alemayehu of Ethiopia: The ultimate reading list

Andrew Heavens
9 min readDec 10, 2022

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In 1868, British troops charged into the mountain empire of Ethiopia, stormed the citadel of its monarch Tewodros II, freed his European prisoners and grabbed his treasures and sacred manuscripts. They also took his son — six-year-old Prince Alemayehu — and brought the boy back with them to the cold shores of England. He was never allowed to go home.

Here is everything you need to read and hear about Ethiopia’s lost prince, compiled by Andrew Heavens, author of the upcoming book, The Prince and the Plunder, which tells the tale of the boy, the conflict and the missing loot. There will be separate reading lists for the fighting and the treasure — Ethiopia’s ‘Elgin Marbles’.

Start with these six

1 Don’t Ask The Dragon by Lemn Sissay, illustrations by Greg Stobbs, 2022
A fictional depiction to start with. Sometimes you don’t need piles of primary sources and detail. Here is the essence of the prince’s story and plight in 11 words: “This is Alem… He is wondering where he could call home.” It’s a beautiful children’s picture book, with echoes of the prince moved into the modern day, written by the Ethiopian-British poet Lemn Sissay who knows a thing or two about Alemayehu.

Double page spread from ‘Don’t Ask The Dragon’ by Lemn Sissay, illustrations by Greg Stobbs. The picture shows the little boy, Alem, sitting on the edge of a river and thinking. The words read: “This is Alem. He’s alone and it’s his birthday. He’s wondering where he could call home.”
© Lemn Sissay & Greg Stobbs via Canongate

2 Prince Alamayu: BBC Radio 4, Great Lives, with Lemn Sissay, Elizabeth Laird and Matthew Paris, 2012
More Alemayehu, more Lemn Sissay. The poet, who is also of Ethiopian descent and was fostered in Britain, chose the prince for his appearance on the Radio 4 show where people pick figures that have inspired them. “I spent most of my life searching back for my family, and in finding my family, I also discovered this story of this boy who had a similar estrangement from his people and his country and ultimately his self.”

3 Prince Alamayou of Ethiopia in the Ethiopia Observer, Vol, 13 No 1, 1970
By Lord Amulree
One of the first researchers to make use of the records on Alemayehu in the Royal Archives in Windsor Castle. A detailed, blow-by-blow account focusing on the boy’s time in Britain from a now elusive edition of Ethiopia Observer. I will try to find a better version to link to.

4 Anecdotes of Alamayu, The Late King Theodore’s Son , 1870
By C.C.
You have to take care with this one and read beneath the surface. It is an account of Alamayu’s early days in England written by Cornelia Cotton, the mother-in-law of the prince’s guardian, published just two years after he arrived. The book is drenched in Victorian sentimentality and draws a dewy-eyed portrait of a little lost African orphan, rescued by the British and gratefully settling into his new home. Look closer and you’ll catch glimpses of the real story, and a real child who is adventurous, devout, bursting with love but deeply marked by the trauma of his very recent losses. You’ll also see signs of the real affection he found and the real affection he felt, hundreds of miles away from his lost kingdom.

Part of the cover of Anecdotes of Alamayu, By C.C, published in 1870

5 Alemayehu, 1999
By Michael Daniel Ambatchew
Spoiler alert - the prince’s story has a heart-breaking ending. When you fall for him, you can’t help running through an endless lists of “what-ifs” in your mind. What if he had never left Ethiopia? What if the British had let him go home? What if something else had happened on that cold winter night outside Leeds? Ethiopian children’s book author Michael Daniel Ambatchew takes one of those parallel lives and runs with it. Keep an eye on the likes of eBay for a copy.

6 The Prince who Walked with Lions, 2012
By Elizabeth Laird
There are lots of holes in Alemayehu’s story — he was a young child when he came to Britain and only left a handful of letters. Elizabeth Laird’s solution is to fill those holes with her imagination, bolstered by solid research, and tie it all together into one of her best-known children’s novels. The prince is ill in bed at Rugby School, feverish, his mind drifting, hallucinating. He sees figures from the past. “They shake their heads at me. ‘You don’t belong here Alamayu. You ought to be at home.’”

7 The Prince and the Plunder, 2023
By Andrew Heavens
Yes, a seventh choice in this list of six. I can’t not plug my own book. It draws on all of the above and sets out to tell Alemayehu’s whole story from his early days in his father’s fortress on the roof of Africa to his new home across the seas. “A tale for our times as we re-examine Britain’s past, pull down the statues of imperial grandees and look for other figures to commemorate.” I call him Alamayu, as that is how he wrote it.

The full lists of books, plays, films, novels and radio shows on Alemayehu

Alemayehu in Ethiopia

  • A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia, 1868
    By Henry Blanc
    “Waizero Terunish, Alamayou’s mother, never made any complaint; though forsaken by her husband, she remained always faithful to him. She spent usually the long days of her seclusion reading the books she delighted in — the psalms, the lives of the saints and of the Virgin Mary — and bringing up by her side her only son, for whom she had a deep affection.”
  • My Dear Annie: The Letters of Lieutenant Herbert Charles Borrett, 2002
    By Herbert Charles Borrett
  • Narrative of a Journey through Abyssinia in 1862–3, 1867
    By Henry Dufton
    “Once on this march, I was gratified by a sight of the fair Toronetch (Alemayehu’s mother), Iteghe or Sultana to the Abyssinian monarch; but as she was muffled up to the eyes with a superabundance of rich garments, my view was confined to the two brilliant orbs, which, if report be correct, have often returned the withering fire of her royal husband’s.”
  • The Prince and the Plunder, 2023
    By Andrew Heavens
    See details on Top Six list above
  • Record of the Expedition to Abyssinia Vol 1; Vol 2, 1870
    By Holland, T. J. & Hozier, H. M.
  • A History of the Abyssinian Expedition, 1869
    By Clements Markham
    “The King’s house, where the Queen Terunesh dwelt with her little boy, was an oblong building of two stories…”
  • The Barefoot Emperor: An Ethiopian Tragedy, 2008
    By Philip Marsden
  • Narrative of the British Mission to Theodore Vol 1; Vol 2, 1869
    By Hormuzd Rassam
  • The Autobiography of William Simpson, 1903
    By William Simpson, edited by George Eyre-Todd
    “One day, after we had returned a few marches, I went over to Mr. Rassam’s tent and sketched the boy. He was then seven years of age.”

Alemayehu outside Ethiopia

Novels, plays and films

  • Abyssinia, 2001
    by Adewale Ajadi
    The play “play explores the British monarchy and its fascination with one of Ethiopia’s best-loved infants”.
  • Alemayehu, 1999
    By Michael Daniel Ambatchew
    An illustrated children’s book that asks what if…
  • Prince of Nowhere
    A film by Selam Bekele, 2014
    “An experimental film that breaks through time and space, Prince of Nowhere tells the diasporic story of Prince Alemayehu of Abyssinia.”
  • The History of Mischief, 2020
    By Rebecca Higgie
    In this novel, Bezawit from the court of Ethiopia’s Emperor Menelik is sent on a magical mission to persuade Britain to hand back Alemayehu’s body and the Maqdala plunder. “From my window, I couldn’t see the chapel where Alemayehu was buried, but I channelled former mischiefs who were much more attuned to the earth. I searched for him, digging in the ground with my mind.”
  • The Curse of Magdala, 2022
    By Colonel Ashutosh Kale
    A gothic horror romance with Alemayehu as avenging ghost
  • The Prince who Walked with Lions, 2012
    By Elizabeth Laird
    A children’s novel that starts in imagined fever dreams
  • The Night Language: A Novel, 2017
    By David Rocklin
    “When Parliament accuses Alamayou of murder, the young prince is sentenced to return to Abyssinia, where he will be executed. His only hope comes from the very thing that cannot be uttered: the unexpected and forbidden love between Alamayou and Philip.”
  • Don’t Ask The Dragon, 2022
    By Lemn Sissay, illustrations by Greg Stobbs
    A children’s picture book about a little boy called Alem who “is wondering where he could call home.”
  • I Was a Stranger, 2004
    A radio play by Peter Spafford
    Broadcast on Radio 4, starring Chewitel Ejitfor as Alemayehu. Here is a discussion of a performance at Leeds Lit Fest in 2008.
    Alemayehu looks back on his short life from his sickbed. “They think
    I’m delirious with the fever, but my mind is perfectly clear…”

Legacy

  • Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America, 2019
    By Nadia Nurhussein
    Alemayehu “is a romantic and spectacular figure, displaced in unending exile, steeped in nostalgia and obsolescence, but also an example of successful assimilation of the exotic.”
  • My People, Callaloo, vol. 34, no. 3, 2011, pp. 819–28
    By Elleni Centime Zeleke
    “When Alemayehu sits for a photo he already looks like a dead memory. It is as if he already understood his fate.”

This is a work in progress. Please send any additions, suggestions and comments to andrew.heavens@gmail.com.

African History
Ethiopia
British Empire
Repatriation
Prince Alemayehu

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Andrew Heavens

Written by Andrew Heavens

1 Follower

Author of The Prince and the Plunder - www.theprinceandtheplunder.com - a book on how Britain took piles of treasure and one small boy from Ethiopia.

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