ABSTRACT
When Christmas and the New Year had passed, the uncertainties of real daily life announced themselves to our young hero, together with the need for decisions and some hard work. His personal position was far from clear. He was in England to recuperate after the many attacks of malaria that had plagued him during his eight years in the Middle East. But the Foreign Office had appointed him to be a member of a special international commission set up by Russia and England in order to establish once and for all a fair and practical border between Turkey and Persia. 79 The creation of this body was one of the results of the peace which had been imposed on the Turks, and it seemed logical to think of Layard as a member. It was not unproblematic, however, for his exact role in the commission had not been spelled out, whether he was to lead it together with Colonel Fenwick Williams, or whether he was in fact to act as a kind of secretary to the commission. Alison in Constantinople warned him against this assignment, which he felt would be impossible to carry through to a satisfactory conclusion because of the countless ethnic and religious conflicts which characterised life in the region where the commission was supposed to work.
