Richard Lamb travels through "Banda Oriental" (Uruguay) to find himself a perfect job and a perfect girl while his wife back home is totally oblivious to his colourful and often comic misadventures. Richard finds himself in various tricky spots, amongst natives and eventually comes to an important realisation—English imperialism is bad for this place!Jorge Luis Borges dedicated an essay to The Purple Land in his book Other Inquisitions. He compared Hudson's novel to the Odyssey and described it as perhaps the "best work of gaucho literature." Ernest Hemingway also famously referred to Hudson's book in his novel The Sun Also Rises. Excerpt: "Three chapters in the story of my life—three periods, distinct and well defined, yet consecutive—beginning when I had not completed twenty-five years and finishing before thirty, will probably prove the most eventful of all. To the very end they will come back oftenest to memory and seem more vivid than all the other years of existence—the four-and-twenty I had already lived, and the, say, forty or forty-five—I hope it may be fifty or even sixty—which are to follow. For what soul in this wonderful, various world would wish to depart before ninety! The dark as well as the light, its sweet and its bitter, make me love it..."

This collection of essays covers Britain's relationship with Argentina from the 19th century, when Argentina formed part of Britain's ""informal empire"", up until the Falklands War and its aftermath. Among the subjects covered are: the role of Argentina in the ""informal empire""; British capital in Argentina; the decline of the connection and the rise of Peron; British emigration and settlement; culture, literature and dance; the press and the Perons; the Antarctic dimension; the Falklands War and its aftermath; and the future of the relationship.

Richard Lamb travels through "Banda Oriental" (Uruguay) to find himself a perfect job and a perfect girl while his wife back home is totally oblivious to his colourful and often comic misadventures. Richard finds himself in various tricky spots, amongst natives and eventually comes to an important realisation—English imperialism is bad for this place!Jorge Luis Borges dedicated an essay to The Purple Land in his book Other Inquisitions. He compared Hudson's novel to the Odyssey and described it as perhaps the "best work of gaucho literature." Ernest Hemingway also famously referred to Hudson's book in his novel The Sun Also Rises. Excerpt: "Three chapters in the story of my life—three periods, distinct and well defined, yet consecutive—beginning when I had not completed twenty-five years and finishing before thirty, will probably prove the most eventful of all. To the very end they will come back oftenest to memory and seem more vivid than all the other years of existence—the four-and-twenty I had already lived, and the, say, forty or forty-five—I hope it may be fifty or even sixty—which are to follow. For what soul in this wonderful, various world would wish to depart before ninety! The dark as well as the light, its sweet and its bitter, make me love it…"

The Purple Land is a novel that sets in 19th-century Uruguay by William Henry Hudson, first published in 1885 under the title The Purple Land that England Lost. Initially a commercial and critical failure, it was reissued in 1904 with the full title The Purple Land, Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda Orientál, in South America, as told by Himself. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator explains the title, "I will call my book The Purple Land. For what more suitable name can one find for a country so stained with the blood of her children?"

William Henry Hudson was a well-respected author and naturalist. Hudson was born in Argentina to two English settlers and he would eventually settle in England where he produced many ornithological studies. Hudson is now best remembered for books such as Green Mansions, The Purple Land That England Lost, and A Crystal Age. The Purple Land That England Lost, published in 1885, is a novel set in Uruguay that centers around a young Englishman who marries a teenage Argentinian girl without asking her father's permission. The young couple is then forced to flee to Uruguay.

William Henry Hudson was a well-respected author and naturalist. Hudson was born in Argentina to two English settlers and he would eventually settle in England where he produced many ornithological studies. Hudson is now best remembered for books such as Green Mansions, The Purple Land That England Lost, and A Crystal Age.The Purple Land That England Lost, published in 1885, is a novel set in Uruguay that centers around a young Englishman who marries a teenage Argentinian girl without asking her father's permission. The young couple is then forced to flee to Uruguay.

The Purple Land is a novel set in 19th-century Uruguay by William Henry Hudson, first published in 1885 under the title The Purple Land that England Lost. Initially a commercial and critical failure, it was reissued in 1904 with the full title The Purple Land, Being One Richard Lamb's Adventures in the Banda Orientál, in South America, as told by Himself. Towards the end of the novel, the narrator explains the title, "I will call my book The Purple Land. For what more suitable name can one find for a country so stained with the blood of her children?"