Author’s Note

Author’s Note

The descriptions of the Sultan’s harem are accurate.

Sebastopol fell in September 1855 and the terms of peace were concluded in January 1856.

King Otho of Greece was finally deposed in 1862.

Viscount Stratford de Redcliffe was one of the greatest Ambassadors Great Britain ever had and he won himself a unique place in diplomatic history.

No other foreigner has ever dominated, as he did, the Turkish Empire. The Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, wrote on his death in 1884,

“Thou third great Canning, stand among our best

And noblest, now thy long day’s work has ceased,

Here silent is our Minster of the West

Who wert the voice of England in the East.”

Chapter One 1855

Chapter One
1855

Lord Castleford, galloping over the uneven ground, which was bright with wild grasses and flowers brilliant against the darkness of cypress trees, was conscious of a feeling of well-being.

After travelling for many weeks and being immersed in diplomatic meetings and memoranda, it was a joy to feel free and for the moment away from it all.

It was a brilliant summer’s day, the air was clear as crystal and, reining in his horse, he looked down at the City to which in the past all the civilised world had brought learning, art, riches and splendour.

Some of the glory of Constantinople had faded, but from the distance the glitter of the domes and spires, the vistas of marble colonnades, the great Palaces with their parapets and gilded balconies laden with sculpture, still stirred the imagination.

It was several years since Lord Castleford had been in Turkey and he thought as he looked on its sun-kissed Capital that the real beauty of Constantinople lay in its water.

From where he stood there was water everywhere, clear, blue, shimmering away into the placid Sea of Marmora.

To the North there was the narrow strait of the Bosporus teeming with barges, caïques, launches, boats and the Battleships of Britain, France and Turkey carrying troops to the Crimea.

Below him lay the glittering loveliness of the Golden Horn, which bisected the densest portion of the City, lending a strange and marvellous grace to all it touched.

As he thought of the City below him, Lord Castleford remembered that he had not yet, as he had intended, purchased a present for his host, the British Ambassador, the recently ennobled Lord Stratford de Redcliffe.

He had intended to bring him a gift from Persia where he had been posted as a special delegate to the Shah.

But he had in fact little time when he was in Teheran and what he had been offered seemed too ordinary and commonplace to be a fitting present for the venerated, autocratic and universally admired ‘The Great Elchi’, who had reformed the Ottoman Empire.