Rahime Perestu Sultan (1830–1904) was the Circassian wife of Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid I and Valide Sultan during the reign of Abd-ul-Hamid II. She was the last Valide Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Her burial place is located at the tomb of Mihrişah Valide Sultan in Eyüp, a part of Istanbul. The name Perestu means peacock in Persian. She became the spiritual mother of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid 11.
Valide Sultan, literally ‘mother sultan’, was the title held by the queen mother of a ruling Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, first used in the 16th century for Ayşe Hafsa Sultan, consort of Selim I and mother of Suleiman the Magnificent. As the mother to the sultan the Valide Sultan had a significant influence on the affairs of the empire.
Saliha Naciye (born circa 1882), a Georgian, thirteenth and last wife of Sultan Abd-ul-Hamid 11. He married her on 4 November 1904 at Yıldız Palace. Saliha Naciye accompanied Abd-ul-Hamid into exile and returned to Istanbul with him in 1912. She died on 4 December 1923 in a mansion located at Erenköy and was buried near the mausoleum of Sultan Mahmud II, located at Divan Yolu Street. She was about the age of forty-one.
Crown Prince Mehmed Abid Efendi, Abd-ul-Hamid’s son by Saliha Naciye, died in Beirut in 1973 and was buried in Damascus.
Sir Edward Grey. He continued to serve as Foreign Secretary until 1916, up to then the longest continuous tenure of any person in that office. Best remembered for his remark at the outbreak of the First World War: ‘The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life-time’. History knows the lamps flickered back on for a brief period after 1918, to be extinguished in 1939 by the murderous Adolph Hitler.
Sir Edward was ennobled as Viscount Grey of Fallodon in 1916. In 1919 he became Ambassador to the United States, and later Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords. His interest in nature began early, on his father’s estate at Falloden. Probably inspired by his first wife Dorothy’s knowledge of bird-song, he joined the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1893 and became a Vice-President in 1909.
In 1927, Hodder and Stoughton published Grey’s The Charm of Birds. It was an immediate popular success and still widely read and admired. Grey’s second wife Pamela’s contribution to The Charm of Birds can be seen in her description of the dawn chorus and of a goldfinch nesting among apple blossom.
In 1928 Grey was made Chancellor of Oxford University although his own academic background had been slight - ‘rusticated’ from Baliol though he returned to take a lowly Third in Jurisprudence.
He died in 1933.
Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell CBE FRS DSc LLD (23 November 1864–2 July 1945), zoologist, was Secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1903 to 1935. He directed the policy of the London Zoo, and created Whipsnade, the world’s first open zoological park. He died in July 1945 after being knocked down outside the north gate of London Zoo.
Henry Morton Stanley (28 January 1841-May 1904). Born John Rowlands, he was a Welsh journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of central Africa and his search for missionary and explorer David Livingstone. Upon finding Livingstone, Stanley later claimed he uttered the now-famous greeting, ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?’. Stanley is also known for his discoveries and development of the Congo region.
Major Percy Horace Gordan Powell-Cotton (1866-1940). Elephant hunter. The largest African elephant he shot carried tusks weighing 372lbs, one tusk being over 9 feet in length and more than two feet in circumference. The world may never see the like of such an elephant again, the more’s the pity, though most likely poachers would seek it out and kill it.
Acknowledgments
My great thanks to –
Lesley Abdela, my partner, for her ever-warm encouragement and interest in these adventures. As I wrote in my first novel in 2012, she has taken on work assignments at great risk to her life in distant, war-torn places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and now turbulent places like Egypt and Ukraine, to bring in an income while I tap away on a laptop in the beautiful woods around Burwash, in the Sussex High Weald, not too far from where Holmes bought his bee-farm, or in successive Septembers on the island of Gavdos in the Aegean for the final run-through of the text.
Steve Emecz, Managing Director, MX Publishing. A hero to over 100 Sherlock Holmes authors, including me. MX is the largest publisher of Sherlock Holmes stories in the world, many of them now being translated into other languages including Russian. MX is a tremendous asset to the United Kingdom and to everyone who likes to escape from the everyday real world for a while, accompanying Holmes and Watson on their great adventures.
Ailsa Crofts in far-away Scotland for her sterling work editing ‘The Sword’, cutting down on excesses and diversions which creep into the text as I build it into a full-length novel. And to Rosie Grupp whose professional skill has made the layout so aesthetically pleasing and easy on the eye.
Dr. Judith Rowbotham. Yet again this exceptional historian of Victorian crime has performed her wonders for The Sword of Osman whenever I have needed information and background. Her expertise ranges far beyond crime alone. She put together the Foreign Secretary’s outfit in one of the important scenes where he attempts to hide his identity at the Regent’s Park Zoological Gardens, and provided insights into the risks taken by Holmes and Watson masquerading as naval officers while on a diplomatic mission for the British Government at the time the 1907 Hague Convention on the laws of war was being finalised.
Heather Johnson, The National Museum Library, Royal Navy, Portsmouth. Heather’s and her colleagues’ unstinting assistance in technical matters concerning the Royal Navy in 1906 added immensely to the sheer fun in writing a novel set in the past. For example: ‘There is about 15 fathoms depth of water in the Golden Horn, which is essentially non-tidal and is sufficient for depth purposes. The B Class submarines were new in 1906 and capable of being deployed to the Mediterranean, indeed some were in action later in Turkish waters including the Dardanelles but the battery life and submersion time was limited. As for a mock battle, this would only really be viable with any accompanying ships in the squadron. If Dreadnought is accompanied by escorts then something might be arranged, this could be made most impressive by rapid firing of the 12lb anti-torpedo craft guns and a limited number of shots from the big guns. Equally viable would be a practice shoot against some form of agreed upon target, bearing in mind that the blast of the main turret guns could cause damage and/or discomfort to observers such that the Sultan and entourage would need to be on the bridge.’
Eric Shelmerdine M.A.B.I. W.A.D. General Secretary of the Association of British Investigators. With his permission I have used his name and turned him into the dragoman who tried his best to bamboozle Holmes. Eric, whenever you’re in Turkey don’t stand for too long on the Galata Bridge.
Professor Benjamin Fortna, Historian of the Modern Middle East at SOAS, University of London. A world expert on the final years of the Ottoman Empire. His special research focus on the late Ottoman Empire and the early Turkish Republic was both gripping and valuable as background to my plot.
Robert Ribeiro. Again my thanks for his eagle (and lawyerly) eye in reading through the typescript and offering valuable suggestions on terminology and matters of historical fact. And to his wife Professor Aileen Ribeiro, author of many books and articles on the history of dress, the most recent being Fashion and Fiction. Dress in Art and Literature in Stuart England (Yale: 2005). Their house in Sussex was built and lived in by the illustrator Walter Paget, brother of Sidney Paget whose portrayals in The Strand formed the world’s physical impression of the Great Detective - complete with deerstalker.