The King's Shadow

February 7, 2022
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.

February 15, 2022
In 1827, James Lewis, a lowly member of the British East India Company's army in Afghanistan, deserted. With little education, no skill in language or survival, and a desperate need to get away, he ventured into the unknown, assuming the name Charles Masson. Nearly dead from hunger and exposure, he joined with Josiah Harlan, an American liar and charlatan extraordinaire. Harlan's goal was to discover the lost city of Alexandria, but it is Masson who may have succeeded. On his own, his language skills became excellent, his way of dealing with people for scraps of information and artifacts successful. His reports were highly prized by the geographic societies in London. He wrote what was expected to be an exciting adventure tale but was a condemnation of British imperialism. This, along with the corruption and cruelty of the East India Company, proved his undoing. Written in a scholarly style with proper footnotes and documentation, this account adds to the understanding of a long-misunderstood region. Appropriate for academic and large public libraries.

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March 1, 2022

The life of scholar, adventurer, explorer, and spy Charles Masson is so outlandish that it's hard to believe it isn't fiction. Richardson's (classics and ancient history, Univ. of Durham; Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels and Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity) wild history of Masson's travels in Afghanistan may read like a thriller, but it is based on meticulous research and new sources. It's a fascinating account of Masson's all-consuming search for the legendary lost city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountain, which symbolized the point where East met West. Richardson goes beyond Masson's account of navigating Afghanistan and, in 1833, finding the lost Alexandria; the book also considers Afghanistan's political situation in the 1820s and 1830s, the truth of Masson's accounts, and the country's challenging terrain. For Richardson, the clash between cultures and values in Afghanistan is illustrated by Masson's account as well by the stories of Alexander the Great as they were told on the eastern edge of his conquest. VERDICT A romp through a dramatic landscape and events that will be exciting for anyone interested in history and, in particular, classical archaeology.--Margaret Heller

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Starred review from January 15, 2022
A British historian resurrects the life of a self-taught archaeologist who discovered a lost civilization on the plains of Afghanistan. Charles Masson (1800-1853) was a dreamer and military deserter who infuriated the East India Company's army when he abandoned his post in 1827. He spent years ducking authorities and wandering in India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, stoking his simmering fascination with the lost cities of Alexander the Great. He became a man at war with himself: a groundbreaking archaeologist, an unwilling spy, and a bitter foe of his former employer. With assiduous research, assured authority, and lacerating wit, Richardson, a classics professor, re-creates this hair-raising story. Masson first emerges as James Lewis, working for the East India Company and hating every minute of it. After his desertion, he took on his pseudonym and embarked on a quest to reach Alexander's lost city of Alexandria Beneath the Mountains. But Masson, the first Westerner to explore Afghanistan's ancient past, discovered something more compelling: dazzling evidence of a lost Greek-Buddhist civilization. His most famous find was the Bimaran Casket, a first-century bejeweled reliquary engraved with "the very earliest dateable image of the Buddha which has ever been found." Eventually, a company spymaster tracked Masson down and blackmailed him into becoming a British agent, "a spy for the people he despised most in the world," gathering intelligence on his Afghan hosts as the company fomented a plot to invade. Readers familiar with Afghanistan's Great Game will appreciate this version of an unfolding catastrophe. History buffs and espionage fans will be fascinated with Richardson's cast of characters, which included Victorian megalomaniacs, Afghan princes, Russian adventurers, and corrupt East India employees. Masson seemed consigned to obscurity, but today his discoveries are collected and cataloged at the British Museum and the British Library. Richardson's biography, of a man who burned with the fire of discovery, completes his story. Captivating biography of an archaeological pioneer sure to please history fans and students of the spy game.

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