One of Hosking’s jobs in Tanganyika was to buy the drinks for the dinner parties held by the mining community – the rations consisted of a crate of beer or a bottle of whisky per person. ‘It sounds more than excessive to write this today,’ Hosking notes, ‘but no one seemed to get drunk.’

Review of Exceeding My Brief: Memoirs of a Disobedient Civil Servant by Barbara Hoskings London Review of Books