The Sunshine Land: Ghana at Fifty: Memories of Independence, 1957

Fifty years ago, David Wedd was a young army officer in West Africa’s Gold Coast, when that country became Ghana, the first black African colony to gain independence from British rule. In an account that is by turns exciting, funny and poignant, he depicts the changeover ‘from the inside’.

His lively portrait of the emerging nation introduces us to a whole gallery of characters: the European and African soldiers in his Battalion; traders and market women; religious leaders and witch-doctor...