Guns and Apartheid – an Albanian King in South Africa

Leka Zogu was the only son of the late Zog I, the only monarch to reign in Albania. The Albanian monarchy had an unusually short history. The founder of the royal house, Zog, was a wealthy landowner and politician who, after Albania's independence in 1913, first became prime minister and then president before proclaiming himself king in 1928.

Zog I came from a noble Albanian family. He claimed descent from the Albanian national hero Skanderberg, who led the resistance to the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century.

Zog I and his wife, Geraldine, went into exile on April 7 1939, when Mussolini's Italy invaded Albania. Little Leka Zogu was only two days old. After escaping through Greece, the royal family toured several European countries until they settled in England, from where they moved to Egypt to enjoy the protection of King Farouk I.

The fall of Farouk led the family back to Europe. Leka Zogu continued his education in Switzerland and studied economics and political science at the Sorbonne. He had previously graduated from Sandhurst, the prestigious British military academy. After Zog I died in France in 1961, an exiled "national assembly" proclaimed Leka "the new king of the Albanians" in a Paris hotel.

Bearing the name of Leka I, the young pretender intensified a long campaign against the Communist regime that prohibited him from entering his country.

Spain was his first operations centre. Leka had the sympathies of Spain's anti-Communist dictator, General Francisco Franco. The idyll with the Spanish authorities faded after Franco's death, however, and in 1979 he was expelled after the Spanish discovered an arsenal of weapons in his home.

Leka would later assert that, at the moment of his expulsion, they were "very close" to...