{"id":3517,"date":"2011-01-16T19:00:57","date_gmt":"2011-01-16T19:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/?p=3517"},"modified":"2011-01-16T19:00:57","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T19:00:57","slug":"the-road-to-kabul-british-armies-in-afghanistan-1838-1919","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/the-road-to-kabul-british-armies-in-afghanistan-1838-1919\/","title":{"rendered":"The Road to Kabul: British Armies in Afghanistan, 1838\u20131919"},"content":{"rendered":"

At present there is a temporary exhibition at the National Army Museum in London, The Road to Kabul: British Armies in Afghanistan, 1838\u20131919<\/a><\/i>. It is open until “spring 2011”, and I went along on 9 January 2011.<\/p>\n

It is quite interesting (and free), although I think it probably helps to go armed with at least some background knowledge on the three Anglo-Afghan wars. It is a very traditional exhibition, with medals, photographs and objects “associated with” various people involved in the wars. There are some interactive touch-screens, and while I am of the view that such things are the work of the devil, these ones were actually functional and do provide access to some interesting photographs. <\/p>\n

The only railway content is, unsurprisingly, in the photographs forming part of the display on the Third Afghan War<\/a>. There is an interesting picture of a narrow gauge troop train in [what was then] India on show in the museum, but not on the website (as far as I can tell).<\/p>\n

There is also a photo showing the “Ropeway transit system at Landi Kotal c.1919” (Photo NAM 1963-09-633-12). This is the first photo I have seen of the Khyber Pass ropeway, which is mentioned in passing in PSA Berridge’s book Couplings to the Khyber<\/cite>, which says “Two roads and an aerial ropeway preceded the inflexible iron road” in the Khyber Pass. <\/p>\n

Finally, the exhibition highlights this quote:<\/p>\n

In Kabul in 2001 I was sent with a unit to meet with an Afghan government minister. We had to explain that we weren\u2019t Russian, we were British. As soon as we did he rounded on us and shouted: ‘British? You burned down the covered market!’ My first thought was s***, what have the Paras done now? I apologised and we got on with the meeting. Back at base I asked who had burned down the market. Blank faces all round, until someone at the back said he thought we had burned down the covered market. In 1842.<\/q>
\nWarrant Officer, 1 Mechanised Brigade\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also coming up this year is an exhibition at the British Museum called Afghanistan: Crossroads of the Ancient World<\/a><\/i>, which is open from 3 March to 3 July 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At present there is a temporary exhibition at the National Army Museum in London, The Road to Kabul: British Armies in Afghanistan, 1838\u20131919. It is open until “spring 2011”, and I went along on 9 January 2011. It is quite interesting (and free), although I think it probably helps to go armed with at least […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[121,150],"class_list":["post-3517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous-stuff","tag-museum","tag-ropeway"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewgrantham.co.uk\/afghanistan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}