The King’s Shadow: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Deadly Quest for the Lost City of Alexandria

Durham University classics professor Richardson (Classical Victorians) recounts in this intriguing history 19th-century British explorer John Lewis’s campaign to uncover a lost city in Afghanistan. Sent to India as a soldier for the East India Company in 1821, Lewis walked away from his regiment and eventually settled in Afghanistan. Adopting the pseudonym Charles Masson, he explored the plains of Bagram, collecting thousands of ancient coins, and developing a theory of ancient history that portrayed Alexander the Great and the Greeks as seeking to learn from other cultures rather than destroy them, a view that was in direct conflict with ideas of British imperialism. Masson eventually ran afoul of the British government and the East India Company, and he was imprisoned in 1840 as a traitor and a spy. His hopes of proving that Bagram was the site of the lost city known as Alexandria beneath the Mountains began to fade, and in 1842 he returned to England destitute and ailing. Though Richardson occasionally veers into extraneous minutiae, he spins a colorful tale of adventure and intrigue. This well-researched account restores an explorer to his rightful place in history. (Apr.)