ABSTRACT
The major had lived in the East for more than twenty-two years, so his return to London was one of the crucial events in his life. He was already a well-known figure in learned circles in London, the admired translator of the old Persian inscription at Bisutun, and the writer of a number of articles in the journals of the Royal Geographic Society and the Royal Asiatic Society. He slipped with ease and pleasure into the social life of London, the intelligent, learned and incredibly erudite soldier who had seen and experienced so much in the Empire. A portrait from this year shows us the forty-year-old major, a sensitive man with a surprisingly youthful, almost childish face, who sits leaned over his notebooks and copies of Persian cuneiform inscriptions (see Figure 24.1).
