Article by Diane Parkes

It was more than 20 years ago when journalist and writer Andrew Heavens first became interested in the Ethiopian treasures kept in museums across the UK. Now he has published his first book, The Prince and the Plunder, which tells not just the story of hundreds of stolen artefacts but also the tale of an Ethiopian prince brought to the UK along with the treasures.

Prince Alamayu was just six years old when his father Tewedros II was killed by British troops at the Battle of Magdala in 1868 in the country formerly known as Abyssinia and now called Ethiopia. The conquering powers decided to bring the child to England where he met Queen Victoria and Lord Tennyson but had few friends and no family.

Andrew, who lived in Walsall and worked for the Express and Star across the Black Country in the 1990s, has researched the prince’s story and retells it in his book, published by The History Press. And Andrew will be in Birmingham on March 13 for a free event to discuss The Prince and the Plunder.

“My book was born on a cold winter afternoon when a train pulled into Edinburgh’s Waverley Station,” he says. “Out walked a group of black-robed priests, led by the archbishop of the ancient Ethiopian city of Axum. Close behind came diplomats, officials, a delegation of Rastafarians from the Ethiopian World Federation and representatives of Ethiopian Orthodox Christian congregations from across Britain, dressed in white, red, gold and green. They had come to Scotland’s capital in January 2002 to receive a treasure.”

That treasure was an Ethiopian religious artefact known as a tabot which had been discovered in a battered Victorian case at St John’s Church off Princes Street in Edinburgh by priest the Rev John McLuckie. After consulting with his congregation, Rev McLuckie arranged to return the tabot to Ethiopia, and so the delegation duly arrived in Scotland.

Andrew had by then left the Midlands and was working as the communications officer for the Scottish Episcopal Church so helped with the organisation and publicity around the event.

“Debates around the repatriation of imperial loot and plunder and other disputed objects – from the Elgin Marbles to the Rosetta Stone to the Benin Bronzes – are often such angry affairs,” he says. “But this return of a sacred artefact, freely given and graciously received, was a moment of unalloyed joy, a life-changing event.”

In fact Andrew’s next journalism posting was to Ethiopia where he learned more of the history behind the battle of Magdala – and discovered the strange story of the boy prince spirited away to Britain.

“As I read more and more about the battle and the plunder, it soon became clear that there was a footnote, an unexplored subplot, a tragic ‘and finally’ to the story of King Tewodros. Along with all the treasures, the British soldiers had also picked up the monarch’s six-year-old son, Prince Alamayu, and brought him back to the cold shores of Great Britain.

“A boy prince who had spent the first third of his life living on a mountain in the highlands of Abyssinia who had been wrenched thousands of miles away to spend the rest of his life moving between Plymouth, the Isle of Wight, Windsor and Cheltenham and Rugby and a cold house on the outskirts of Leeds.

“It took me another 20 years, scores of research and discussions and repeated dead ends to realise that, when it came to telling this whole story, the prince might be the best place to start. There are lots of serious reasons to be interested in Alamayu - our colonial legacy, the trauma of war, the treatment of children, the wounds left by racism. There are debates to be had on how he came here – was he effectively kidnapped or was he rescued from the battlefield? Was he brought here by accident, in the rush of the army’s exit, or was it down to the machinations of ambitious officers and would-be-guardians looking for a touch of the exotic and the chance of advancement?

“My hope is that people will think about those issues but come away with a predominantly emotional response. Basically, I hope readers will fall for Alamayu.”

Andrew’s book brings together not only the tragic tale of Prince Alamayu but also information on almost 900 items brought back as plunder from Ethiopia following the Battle of Magdala now gathering dust in museum and library collections across the UK and Ireland.

Now based in London, Andrew says: “When it comes to plunder and repatriation, we focus too much on the big-ticket items – the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, the Benin Bronzes – in Ethiopia’s case, the gold crown in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the tabots in the British Museum and Westminster Abbey. But the bulk of the plunder was small-ticket items brought back in soldiers’ knapsacks and pockets.

“Sometimes the smaller items are more interesting and intimate. More than 20 small items displayed in an art show in Leeds in 1868 included part of the queen’s robe, ammunition from Africa’s first home-developed artillery system and chains worn by the captives.

“Almost all of the items are in storage and, in most cases, there is little sign that they have been studied. And as we re-examine Britain’s past, pull down statues of imperial grandees and look for other figures to commemorate and celebrate I hope we can also take Prince Alamayu to our hearts and look at ways of commemorating his life.”

The Prince and the Plunder- How Britain Took One Small Boy and Hundreds of Treasures from Ethiopia by Andrew Heavens is published by The History Press for £22.99.

Andrew Heavens will be discussing The Prince and the Plunder in partnership with Aston University at the Birmingham & Midland Institute on Monday March 13 between 4-6pm. Free tickets are available via Eventbrite