The book Frontier of Fear: Confronting the Taliban on Pakistan’s Border is a personal account of David Lagourie Gosling, who served as the Principal of Edwardes College Peshawar, the provincial capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, from 2006 to 2010.In this book, Gosling gives a detailed account of his time at Edwardes College and the education and politics that came with it.
A Cambridge graduate and nuclear physicist, Gosling served as the Principal of Edwardes College, Peshawar, a prestigious higher education college, and in fact the first co-educational college in the province, where Gosling made an important contribution in significantly increasing the proportion of female students and staff. Affiliated with the University of Peshawar, Edwardes College is named after Sir Herbert Edwardes, a soldier turned administrator who was a Church Missionary Society Vice President. The college, although often referred to as “western and elitist”, initially adopted local languages as the medium of instruction rather than English. Initially, degrees were awarded by the University of Punjab but in 1952, it was affiliated with the University of Peshawar. With the exception of Phil Edmunds and Revd A.M.Dalaya who were from the Sub-continent, majority of the principals (including the author) have been British.
