Giles Milton
Encyclopedia
Giles Milton is a writer who specialises in the history of exploration. His books have been published in seventeen languages worldwide and are international best-sellers. He has written six works of non-fiction, two comic novels and two books for young children.
He is best known for his 1999 best-selling title, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, a historical account of the violent struggle between the English and Dutch for control of the world supply of nutmeg in the early 17th century. The book was serialised by BBC Radio 4. Nathaniel's Nutmeg was followed by Big Chief Elizabeth, Samurai William and White Gold, books of narrative non fiction which took as their subject matter the pioneering English adventurers in Asia, North Africa and the New World, and then by his 2008, Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance, which investigated the bloody sacking of Smyrna
in September, 1922, and subsequent expulsion of 1,300,000 Orthodox Greeks from Turkey and 350,000 Muslims from Greece. His latest book, published in February 2011, is Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War.
Milton is the author of a weekly history blog that focusses on forgotten characters from the past.
and the University of Bristol. He lives in London and Burgundy and is married to the artist and illustrator, Alexandra Milton
. He has three daughters.
The books draw on unpublished source material – diaries, journals and private letters – as well as archival documentation kept by the East India Company
and now housed in the British Library. He also cites contemporary published accounts, notably the 1589 anthology, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation by Richard Hakluyt
and Purchas, his Pilgrimage; or, Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages, 1613, by Samuel Purchas
. In researching his 2008 work, Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922, he collected an extensive archive of unpublished diaries and private letters written by the Levantines of Smyrna.
His most recent title, Wolfram: The Boy who went to War, published in February, 2011 is an account of the wartime experiences of the author's German father-in-law, Wolfram Aichele
in the Ukraine, in Normandy, and as a prisoner-of-war in England and America, based upon wartime letters, diaries and interviews.
Milton's debut non fiction title, The Riddle and the Knight, is a work of historical detection. It follows the trail of Sir John Mandeville, a medieval knight who claimed to have undertaken a thirty-four year voyage through scores of little known lands, including Persia, Arabia, Ethiopia, India, Sumatra and China. Mandeville subsequently wrote a book about his odyssey: it is widely known as The Travels.
The Riddle and the Knight investigates Sir John Mandeville's purported voyage and the shadowy personal biography of the knight himself. It contends that the widely held assertion – that Mandeville's real identity was John de Bourgogne – is based on a flawed testimony of the chronicler John d'Outremeuse.
The book asserts that Mandeville's autobiographical portrait – in which he claims to be a knight living in St Albans
– is probably correct. It also contends that Mandeville was forced to flee his native England when his overlord, Humphrey de Bohun, led a troubled rebellion against King Edward II.
The Riddle and the Knight concludes that the greater part of Mandeville's voyage is fabricated or compiled from earlier sources, notably Odoric of Pordenone
, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine
and Vincent de Beauvais. In spite of Mandeville's extensive borrowings from other works, Milton offers a reappraisal of Mandeville's place in the history of exploration. Mandeville's Travels captured the imagination of the medieval world and was a source of inspiration to Christopher Columbus
as well as notable figures from the Elizabethan era, including Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Martin Frobisher.
Milton assesses Mandeville's influence on English literature. William Shakespeare
, John Milton
, and John Keats
turned to the Travels for inspiration and until the Victorian era it was Sir John Mandeville, not Geoffrey Chaucer
who was known as the 'father of English prose'. Milton's book seeks to restore Mandeville to his literary pedestal, as well as advancing the thesis that he should also be considered the father of exploration.
Nathaniel's Nutmeg follows the battles between English and Dutch merchant adventurers as they competed for control of the world supply of nutmeg, which commanded fabulous prices in the 17th century, because it was widely (but erroneously) believed to have powerful medical properties. 
By 1616, the Dutch had seized all of the principal islands, leaving Run (island)
as the only one not in their control. On Christmas Day, 1616, the English adventurer (and East India Company employee) Nathaniel Courthope
stepped ashore and persuaded the native islanders to grant him an exclusive monopoly over their annual nutmeg harvest. The agreement that was signed with the local chieftains did far more than that: the document effectively ceded the islands of Run and Ai to England in perpetuity. 'And whereas King James by the grace of God is King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, is also by the mercy of God King of Pooloway (Ai Island) and Poolarun (Run Island).'
For the next five years, Courthope and his band of starving followers were besieged by a Dutch force one hundred times greater. The Dutch eventually captured Run and killed Courthope. But the English, smarting over their loss of Run, eventually responded by attacking and capturing the Dutch-controlled island of Manhattan
.
The ensuing negotiations between the Dutch and English would see the latter relinquish their territoirial claim to the island of Run. In return, the Dutch ceded New Amsterdam
to England. It was soon renamed New York City.
Indian word ‘weroanza’, used by the indigenous population in reference to Queen Elizabeth I. It focuses on the pioneering expedition of 1585 to colonise Roanoke Island
in what is now North Carolina
– an expedition that was financed and backed by the Elizabethan courtier and adventurer, Sir Walter Raleigh.
The historical reconstruction of the attempted settlement makes extensive use of eyewitness accounts written by those who occupied senior positions in Raleigh’s expedition – notably Sir Richard Grenville, Ralph Lane
, John White (colonist and artist) and Thomas Harriot
, and details the hardships faced by the colonists as they struggled to survive an increasingly hostile environment. It also seeks to explain the enduring mystery of the lost colonists – 115 men, women and children left behind on Roanoke Island when John White returned to England for help.
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Samurai William is an historical portrayal of the life and adventures of William Adams (sailor)
– an Elizabethan adventurer who was shipwrecked in Japan in 1600. William Adams's story inspired the 1975 best-selling novel, Shogun
by James Clavell
., recounting the history of early European contacts with the Japanese shogun and the ultimately doomed attempts of the English East India Company
to forge profitable trading links with Japan.
William Adams set sail from Rotterdam in 1598, having been employed as pilot on the Dutch ship Liefde (Love). The Liefde was one of five vessels whose ostensible purpose was to head for the Spice Islands or Maluku Islands
of the East Indies
. But the expedition's financiers also encouraged their captains to attack and ransack Spanish possessions on the coast of South America. The fleet was scattered as it emerged through the Strait of Magellan
and into the Pacific Ocean. The captain and crew of the Liefde – concerned that their cargo of broadcloth would not have a ready market in the tropical Spice Islands – took the extraordinary decision to head to Japan, a land of which they were wholly ignorant.
The voyage was fraught with hardship and suffering: atrocious weather and diminishing supplies soon have a deleterious effect on the men's health. On 12 April 1600, William Adams sighted the coast of Japan: by this time, only 24 crew members were still alive.
'The bookmakes use of original source documents – including manuscript letters and journals – to construct a vivid portrayal of Adams's two decades in Japan. The book reveals Adams's personal skill in dealing the Japanese and suggests that he was adept at adapting to Japanese culture. He helped his cause by deliberately creating a divide between himself and the Portuguese Jesuit missionaries who were becoming increasingly unpopular in Japanese courtly circles.
He soon came to the attention of the ruling shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu
, for whom he built two European style sailing vessels. Ieyasu rewarded Adams with gifts – including a country estate near the imperial capital of Edo
. Adams was also honoured with the title of hatamoto or bannerman, a prestigious position that made him a direct retainer of the shogun's court. It also linked Adams to the warrior class that had dominated Japanese history for centuries: all of Adams's fellow hatamoto were samurai. Adams was by now living like the native Japanese. He spoke the language fluently, wore a courtly kimono
and changed his name to Miura Anjin (Mr Pilot). He also married a Japanese woman of good birth, even though he had left behind a wife and daughter in England.
Much of Samurai William deals with the ultimately doomed attempts of the East India Company
to make use of Adams's influence at court in order to open a trading station at Hirado in south-west Japan. The account of life in Hirado is told through original sources – notably the personal diary of Richard Cocks
, head of the factory in Hirado, and the journal of Captain John Saris
, commander of the ship that brought the East India Company merchants to Japan.
The author quotes widely from original documents now housed in the British Library
: these were edited and published by Anthony Farrington in his The English Factory in Japan.
Samurai William provides an account of Adams's death in May, 1620, and the sorry decline of the doomed trading post. It ends with the brutal suppression of Christianity in Japan and the closure of the country to foreign trade for more than two centuries.
White Gold investigates the slave trade of in North Africa – the enslavement of white people that saw almost one million Europeans enslaved between 1600 and 1800. and mirrored its black counterpart in the cruelty and degradation of individuals. Milton focuses on the Moroccan slave markets of Salé
and Meknes
, where slaves were fattened up before being sold at auction.The author reconstructs the voyage of an English ship, the Francis, which was captured by Barbary corsairs
in 1716. He investigates the fate of the captured crew, focusing on the cabin boy, Thomas Pellow, who was to be enslaved at the court of the Moroccan sultan for the next twenty three years.
The sultan, Mulay Ismail , a cruel and capricious master: was in the midst of constructing a vast imperial palace to adorn his capital, Meknes
. The palace was being built as a conscious attempt by Mulay Ismail to outshine his French contemporary, King Louis XIV, whose Palace of Versailles
had been completed a few years earlier. The sultan's slaves – among them Pellow and his 51 shipmates – were compelled to work on the palace's construction. It was gruelling physical labour made worse by the brutal slave drivers who beat any slave who slacked in his work.
Milton's narrative draws on original documents, unpublished diaries and manuscript letters housed in The National Archives and the British Library
manuscript collection. White Gold also makes use of the published narrative written by Pellow himself.
One English slave, Abraham Browne, left a detailed account of his life in the days prior to being sold. He was fed 'fresh vitteles [victuals] once a daye and sometimes twice in abondance, with good white breade from the market place.' Browne correctly surmised that the bread was 'to feed us up for the markett [so] that we might be in some good plight agaynst the day wee weare to be sold.' Once bought, most slaves never again saw freedom. The vast majority were to die in captivity.
Thomas Pellow had a different fate: he would eventually escape and make his return to England. He found passage aboard a ship bound for Penryn, Cornwall
. When he arrived home in 1738, 23 years after leaving home, Pellow's parents did not recognise their son.
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 is Giles Milton’s sixth work of narrative history. It is a graphic account of the sack of Smyrna
(modern Izmir
) in 1922. . The bloody sacking of Smyrna
in September, 1922, and subsequent expulsion of 1,300,000 Orthodox Greeks from Turkey and 350,000 Muslims from Greece is recounted through the eyes of the Levantine community. The book won plaudits for its impartial approach to a contentious episode of history.
The story of the destruction of the second city in Ottoman Turkey and subsequent exodus of two million Greeks from Anatolia and elsewhere is told through the eyewitness accounts of those who were there, making use of unpublished diaries and letters written by Smyrna’s Levantine elite: he contends that their voices are among the few impartial ones in a highly contentious episode of history.
The book has won plaudits for its historical balance: it has been published in both Turkish and Greek. The Greek edition has received widespread coverage in the Greek press.It received publicity in the USA when the New York Times revealed that Presidential candidate John McCain
was reading it while on the campaign trail in 2008. It featured on a 2008 list of books considered by David Cameron’s Conservative Party
to be essential reading by any prospective Member of Parliament.
According to Milton, Smyrna
occupied a unique position in the Ottoman Empire
. Cosmopolitan, rich and tolerant in matters of religion, it was the only city in Turkey with a majority Christian population. Her unusual demographic had earned her the epithet ‘giaour
’ or ‘infidel’. Tensions between Smyrna's Christians and Muslims had first been inflamed by the First Balkan War
of 1912–1913. These tensions were to increase dramatically during the First World War. The majority of Smyrna’s population – including the city’s politically astute governor, Rahmi Bey – favoured the Allied cause. They hoped that Turkey, along with her Central Powers
partners, would lose the war. The city's political position was to be a subject of intense debate at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
. Greece’s Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos
, had long dreamed of incorporating the city into a newly revived Greek Empire in Asia Minor
– the so-called Megali Idea
or Great Idea, and argued his case with considerable aplomb: American President Woodrow Wilson
and Britain’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George
eventually consented to Greek troops being landed in Smyrna.
Paradise Lost chronicles the violence that followed the Greek landing through the eyewitness accounts of the Levantine community. The author offers a reappraisal of Smyrna’s first Greek governor, Aristidis Stergiadis
, whose impartiality towards both Greeks and Turks won him considerable enmity amongst the local Greek population.
The Greek army was despatched into the interior of Anatolia
in an attempt to crush the fledgling army of the Turkish Nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal
. The book provides a graphic account of this doomed military campaign: by the summer of 1922, the Greek army was desperately short of supplies, weaponry and money. Kemal seized the moment and attacked.
The third section of Paradise Lost is a day-by-day account of what happened when the Turkish army entered Smyrna. The narrative is constructed from accounts written principally by Levant
ines and Americans who witnessed the violence first hand, in which the author seeks to apportion blame and discover who started the conflagration that was to cause the city’s near-total destruction. The book' also investigates the cynical role played by the commanders of the 21 Allied battleships in the bay of Smyrna, who were under orders to rescue only their own nationals, abandoning to their fate the hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenian refugees gathered on the quayside.
Many were saved only when a lone American charity worker named Asa Jennings commandeered a fleet of Greek ships and ordered them to sail into the bay of Smyrna. Jennings mission was, contends Milton, one of the greatest humanitarian rescue missions of the 20th century.
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 ends with the exodus of two million Greeks from Turkey and the expulsion of 400,000 Turks from Greece – an exchange of population that was enshrined in law in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne
.
, a young artist whose formative years were spent under the shadow of the Third Reich.
Wolfram Aichele’s parents were deeply hostile to the Nazis. Many of their interests, including freemasonry
and the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner
, conflicted with the politics of Nazism
. Wolfram’s father, the artist Erwin Aichele
, managed to avoid joining the Nazi Party. But he could do nothing to prevent his son being drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst
or Reich Labour Service in 1942, the first inevitable step into the Wehrmacht
.
Aichele was sent to the Ukraine
and Crimea
, where he contracted a life-threatening strain of diphtheria
. In 1944 he was sent to Normandy
in France, where he served in the 77th Infantry Division
as a ‘funker’ or Morse code
operator. He took part in the German army’s doomed attempt to halt American troops from breaking out of their beachhead on Utah Beach
.
Wolfram Aichele survived a massive aerial bombardment in June, 1944. Two months later, he surrendered to American forces and was a prisoner of war, first in England and then in America, where he was interned at Camp Gruber
in Oklahoma
. When he returned to Germany in 1946, he discovered that his home town, Pforzheim
, had been obliterated in the Royal Air Force
’s firestorm raid of 23 February 1945.
Giles Milton’s book received widespread critical acclaim for its use of original unpublished source material and its account of the lives of ordinary Germans. In America, the book is published under the title The Boy Who Went to War: The Story of a Reluctant German Soldier in World War II.
Bernard Hamilton, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, noted: 'Although he [Milton] makes no claim to be writing an academic study... he has clearly done a good deal of research into published sources and unpublished records.' He adds: 'Were Sir John alive today, I am sure he would have read Milton's book.'
Anthony Sattin
, writing in The Sunday Times, said of the book: 'In the style of true medieval quest, each answer poses another question.' He added: 'The one thing that is irrefutably clear by the final page is that Mandeville's argument that the world was round had an enormous influence on the age of exploration.'
Jason Goodwin
, reviewing the book in Punch magazine, concluded: 'We travel with him [Milton] in the end because he has done his research in the British Library... Milton has scaled a mountain of research, and the twist he gives Mandeville's story is made with elegance and conviction.'
But Philip Glazebrook
, writing in The Spectator, felt that Sir John Mandeville remained a shadowy figure, in spite of Milton's best efforts. 'The trouble is, I never really believed in Sir John, could never visualise him, never feel an intriguing presence at the heart of the book.'
Nathaniel's Nutmeg
Martin Booth
, writing of Giles Milton’s book in The Times, concluded: ‘His research is impeccable and his narrative reads in part like a modern-day Robert Louis Stevenson novel.’
Nicholas Fearn in The Independent on Sunday wrote: ‘This book is a magnificent piece of popular history. It is an English story, but its heroism is universal. This is a book to read, reread, then, aside from the X-rated penultimate chapter, read again to your children.’
In The Spectator, Philip Hensher
wrote: ‘To write a book which makes the reader, after finishing it, sit in a trance, lost in his passionate desire to pack a suitcase and go, somehow, to the fabulous place – that, in the end, is something one would give a sack of nutmegs for.’
Time Magazine said of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: ‘Milton spins a fascinating tale of swashbuckling adventure, courage and cruelty, as nations and entrepreneurs fought for a piece of the nutmeg action.’
Big Chief Elizabeth
Janet Maslin
, writing in The New York Times, commented: ‘In an exceptionally pungent, amusing and accessible historical account, Giles Milton brings readers right into the midst of these colonists and their daunting American adventure... there’s no question that Mr Milton’s research has been prodigious and that it yields an entertaining, richly informative look at the past.’ 23 November 2000.
Many reviews – among them those published by the above-mentioned The New York Times, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Financial Times The New Statesman and The Observer – singled out Milton’s exceptional talent in making use of original source material.
In Britain’s Daily Mail, Peter Lewis
wrote: ‘This grippingly told true adventure story is made all the more immediate by using lavish quotations in wild Elizabethan spelling.’
The Spectator also praised the author for bringing history to life. ‘Milton has a terrific eye for the kind of detail that can bring the past vividly to life off the page,’ wrote reviewer, Steve King. ‘He revels in the grim realities of the early colonists’ experience. There’s disease, famine, torture, cannibalism and every kind of deprivation imaginable. Milton’s findness for the faintly off-colour vignette makes for stomach-turning but compelling reading.’
The Sunday Times concluded: ‘Milton has amassed an impressive amount of information from original sources, and it is evidence from Elizabethan journals that makes this such a vivid story.’
There were a few detractors. Writing in The Guardian, Sukhdev Sandhu expressed admiration for Milton’s writing talents. ‘It’s almost impossible to summarise Milton’s book, from which marvelous, vivid stories spill out like swagsack booty.’ But he noted that the book did little to deconstruct the realities in Imperialism. ‘He [Milton] is in love with deeds not discourse, harking back to popular 19th century historians like J A Froude.
And John Adamson
, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, also had reservations about the book. In an article entitled, ‘’History: the director’s cut’’, he argued that the book did not place enough demands on the reader. ‘All you have to do is sit back with your tub of popcorn and let the story unfold.’
Samurai William
Matthew Redhead, writing in The Times, said: ‘Giles Milton is a man who can take an event from history and make it come alive.... He has a genius for lively prose, and an appreciation for historical credibility. With Samurai William, he has crafted an inspiration for those of us who believe that history can be exciting and entertaining.’
In The Sunday Times, Katie Hickman
concluded: ‘Giles Milton has once again shown himself to be a master of historical narrative. The story of William Adams is a gripping tale of Jacobean derring-do, a fizzing, real-life Boy’s Own adventure underpinned by genuine scholarship.’
Writing in The New York Review, the scholarly critic Jonathan Spence
was impressed by Milton’s use of documentary source material. ‘Giles Milton presents [Adams’s story] with undisguised gusto. His notes and bibliography make it clear that he has absorbed much of the voluminous secondary literature on this period and on Adams himself.’
Anthony Thwaite
, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, agreed that the book strength lay in its source material. ‘Giles Milton has been assiduous in searching through all the published sources ... if it brings more readers to the marvelous story of how West discovered East, and East discovered West, that’s good.’
In The New York Times, Susan Chira
said that Milton had written ‘a vivid, scrupulously researched biography ... it is a sheer pleasure to read Milton’s vivid portraits of the small corps of foreigners who traded at the sufferance of Japanese feudal lords.’
The Washington Times agreed: ‘He [Milton] recounts in graphic detail – much from primary sources – the astounding hardships and hardihood of those explorers of a dangerous unknown.’
White Gold
Writing in The Independent, Benedict Allen
picked it as one of his Books of the Year (2004). 'A romping tale of 18th-century sailors enslaved by Barbary seafarers and sold to a Moroccan tyrant. It has all the usual Miltonian ingredients: swift narrative and swashbuckling high-drama laid on a bed of historical grit.’
In his review in The Observer, Dan Neill, felt the strength of the book was its use of contemporary documents. ‘Drawing on letters, journals and manuscripts written by the slaves.... Milton has produced a disturbing account of the barbaric splendor of the imperial Moroccan court, which he brings to life with considerable panache... White Gold is an engrossing story, expertly told.’
In The Daily Mail, Peter Lewis
called the book an ‘extraordinary, eye-opening and most readable revelation of a dark place and shameful episode in our history.’
Tim Ecott, writing in The Guardian, said the strength of the book lay in its two magnificent central characters, Thomas Pellow and Mulay Ismail. He concluded: ‘Milton has ingeniously retrieved and polished a hidden nugget from the remarkable treasure house of British history.’
Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s review in The Sunday Times concluded: ‘Milton’s story could scarcely be more action-packed and its setting and subsidiary characters are as fantastic as its events... Milton conjures up a horrifying but enthralling vision of the court of Moulay Ismail.’
In The Sunday Telegraph, Justin Marozzi
wrote: ‘White Gold is lively and diligently researched, a chronicle of cruelty on a grand scale... an unfailingly entertaining piece of history.’
Philip Hensher
, writing in The Spectator, was sceptical of Milton’s portrayal of Moulay Ismail’s court, which he felt was too consonant with Western ideas of orientalism: ‘It is all a little too much like a fantasy by Ingres,’ he wrote. But he praised White Gold for being ‘extensively researched’ and concluded that it was ‘an exciting and sensational account of a really swashbuckling historical episode.’
Paradise Lost
Jeremy Seal, writing in The Daily Telegraph, called Paradise Lost: 'A compelling story… Milton's considerable achievement is to deliver with characteristic clarity and colour this complex epic narrative, Milton brings a commendable impartiality to his thoroughly researched book.
William Dalrymple, writing in The Sunday Times, praised the book for both its impartial approach and its use of original source material written by the Levantine families of Smyrna.
'It is the lives of these dynasties, recorded in their diaries and letters, that form the focus for Giles Milton’s brilliant re-creation of the last days of Smyrna . . . Milton has written a grimly memorable book about one of the most important events in this process. It is well paced, even-handed and cleverly focused: through the prism of the Anglo-Levantines, he reconstructs both the prewar Edwardian glory of Smyrna and its tragic end. He also clears up, once and for all, who burnt Smyrna, producing irrefutable evidence that the Turkish army brought in thousands of barrels from the Petroleum Company of Smyrna and poured them over the streets and houses of all but the Turkish quarter.
The Spectator and Literary Review also praised the book for its even-handed approach to the controversial sack of Smyrna.
Writing in the Spectator, Philip Mansel
called the book 'an indictment of nationalism … Milton has gone where biographers of Atatürk and historians of Turkey, who often want Turkish official support, have feared to tread. He has reproduced accounts by individual Armenian, Greek and foreign eye-witnesses, as well as British sailors’ and consuls’ accounts. It is a much needed corrective to official history.
Adam Le Bor, writing in the Literary Review, said: ‘Milton brings the past alive in this vivid, detailed and poignant book by drawing on family letters and archives, and first-hand interviews with those elderly survivors who remember Smyrna’s glory days.’
Alev Adil, writing in The Independent, said 'Giles Milton's engrossing account of the events leading up to the destruction of the city in 1922 is based largely on the previously unpublished letters and diaries of these Levantine dynasties. Milton's book celebrates the heroism of individuals who put lives before ideologies.'
Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War
James Delinpole writing in The Daily Mail called the book ‘idiosyncratic and utterly fascinating… what this book captures well is how, little by little, ordinary Germans were bullied and cajoled into acquiescing with Hitler's insane plans.’
For Daily Express reviewer Christopher Silvester, Milton shows how ‘insidiously Nazism encroached on the daily lives of German citizens… as a portrait of how these civilised individuals were able to survive, this is invaluable.’
Hester Vaizy’s review, ‘A Conflict of Loyalty’ published in The Spectator, 21 May 2011, favourably compared the book with standard histories of Nazi Germany: ‘Milton’s account reveals that Germans, too, experienced real suffering in wartime… without forgetting or denying the crimes perpetrated in Nazi death camps, Milton’s close analysis of the experiences of Germans demonstrates that they too could be victims of the war.’
In his BBC History Magazine article, Roger Moorhouse called Wolfram ‘a very valid and interesting book, which offers an illuminating insight into the experience of ‘ordinary’ Germans living in ‘small-town’ Germany.’
He is best known for his 1999 best-selling title, Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, a historical account of the violent struggle between the English and Dutch for control of the world supply of nutmeg in the early 17th century. The book was serialised by BBC Radio 4. Nathaniel's Nutmeg was followed by Big Chief Elizabeth, Samurai William and White Gold, books of narrative non fiction which took as their subject matter the pioneering English adventurers in Asia, North Africa and the New World, and then by his 2008, Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance, which investigated the bloody sacking of Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
in September, 1922, and subsequent expulsion of 1,300,000 Orthodox Greeks from Turkey and 350,000 Muslims from Greece. His latest book, published in February 2011, is Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War.
Milton is the author of a weekly history blog that focusses on forgotten characters from the past.
Biography
Milton was educated at Latymer Upper SchoolLatymer Upper School
Latymer Upper School, founded by Edward Latymer in 1624, is a selective independent school in Hammersmith, West London, England, lying between King Street and the Thames. It is a day school for 1,130 pupils – boys and girls aged 11–18; there is also the Latymer Preparatory School for boys and girls...
and the University of Bristol. He lives in London and Burgundy and is married to the artist and illustrator, Alexandra Milton
Alexandra Milton
Alexandra Milton is an artist and illustrator. She works primarily in collage.The artwork in her debut children’s book, Call Me Gorgeous, was nominated for the 2010 Kate Greenaway Medal....
. He has three daughters.
Interests and influences
The author's non-fiction titles display a particular interest in the lesser known adventurers of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the ill-treatment of indigenous populations as the first English merchants and traders moved into newly colonized lands.The books draw on unpublished source material – diaries, journals and private letters – as well as archival documentation kept by the East India Company
East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
and now housed in the British Library. He also cites contemporary published accounts, notably the 1589 anthology, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation by Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt
Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is principally remembered for his efforts in promoting and supporting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and...
and Purchas, his Pilgrimage; or, Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages, 1613, by Samuel Purchas
Samuel Purchas
Samuel Purchas , was an English travel writer, a near-contemporary of Richard Hakluyt.Purchas was born at Thaxted, Essex, and graduated at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1600; later he became a B.D., and with this degree was admitted at Oxford in 1615. In 1604 he was presented by James I to the...
. In researching his 2008 work, Paradise Lost, Smyrna 1922, he collected an extensive archive of unpublished diaries and private letters written by the Levantines of Smyrna.
His most recent title, Wolfram: The Boy who went to War, published in February, 2011 is an account of the wartime experiences of the author's German father-in-law, Wolfram Aichele
Wolfram Aichele
Wolfram Aïchele - known as Wolfram - is an internationally acclaimed artist from Baden-Wurttemberg in Southern Germany....
in the Ukraine, in Normandy, and as a prisoner-of-war in England and America, based upon wartime letters, diaries and interviews.
Non-fiction
- The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, 1996
- Nathaniel's Nutmeg: How One Man's Courage Changed the Course of History, 1999
- Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America, 2000
- Samurai William: The Englishman Who Opened Japan, 2002
- White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves, 2005
- Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922, 2008
- Wolfram: The Boy Who Went To War, 2011
Novels
- Edward Trencom's Nose: A Novel of History, Dark Intrigue, and Cheese, 2007
- According to Arnold: A Novel of Love and Mushrooms, 2009
Children's books
- Call Me Gorgeous, 2009, Alexandra MiltonAlexandra MiltonAlexandra Milton is an artist and illustrator. She works primarily in collage.The artwork in her debut children’s book, Call Me Gorgeous, was nominated for the 2010 Kate Greenaway Medal....
, illustrator. - Zebedee's Zoo, 2009, Kathleen McEwen, illustrator.
The Riddle and the Knight
The Riddle and the Knight investigates Sir John Mandeville's purported voyage and the shadowy personal biography of the knight himself. It contends that the widely held assertion – that Mandeville's real identity was John de Bourgogne – is based on a flawed testimony of the chronicler John d'Outremeuse.
The book asserts that Mandeville's autobiographical portrait – in which he claims to be a knight living in St Albans
St Albans
St Albans is a city in southern Hertfordshire, England, around north of central London, which forms the main urban area of the City and District of St Albans. It is a historic market town, and is now a sought-after dormitory town within the London commuter belt...
– is probably correct. It also contends that Mandeville was forced to flee his native England when his overlord, Humphrey de Bohun, led a troubled rebellion against King Edward II.
The Riddle and the Knight concludes that the greater part of Mandeville's voyage is fabricated or compiled from earlier sources, notably Odoric of Pordenone
Odoric of Pordenone
Odoric of Pordenone was an Italian late-medieval traveler...
, Giovanni da Pian del Carpine
Giovanni da Pian del Carpine
Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, or John of Plano Carpini or John of Pian de Carpine or Joannes de Plano was one of the first Europeans to enter the court of the Great Khan of the Mongol Empire. He is the author of the earliest important Western account of northern and central Asia, Rus, and other...
and Vincent de Beauvais. In spite of Mandeville's extensive borrowings from other works, Milton offers a reappraisal of Mandeville's place in the history of exploration. Mandeville's Travels captured the imagination of the medieval world and was a source of inspiration to Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
as well as notable figures from the Elizabethan era, including Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir Martin Frobisher.
Milton assesses Mandeville's influence on English literature. William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, and John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
turned to the Travels for inspiration and until the Victorian era it was Sir John Mandeville, not Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
who was known as the 'father of English prose'. Milton's book seeks to restore Mandeville to his literary pedestal, as well as advancing the thesis that he should also be considered the father of exploration.
Nathaniel's Nutmeg
Run (island)
Run is one of the smallest islands of the Banda Islands, which are a part of Indonesia...
as the only one not in their control. On Christmas Day, 1616, the English adventurer (and East India Company employee) Nathaniel Courthope
Nathaniel Courthope
Nathaniel Courthope was an English merchant navy officer involved in the wars with the Dutch over the sea....
stepped ashore and persuaded the native islanders to grant him an exclusive monopoly over their annual nutmeg harvest. The agreement that was signed with the local chieftains did far more than that: the document effectively ceded the islands of Run and Ai to England in perpetuity. 'And whereas King James by the grace of God is King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, is also by the mercy of God King of Pooloway (Ai Island) and Poolarun (Run Island).'
For the next five years, Courthope and his band of starving followers were besieged by a Dutch force one hundred times greater. The Dutch eventually captured Run and killed Courthope. But the English, smarting over their loss of Run, eventually responded by attacking and capturing the Dutch-controlled island of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
.
The ensuing negotiations between the Dutch and English would see the latter relinquish their territoirial claim to the island of Run. In return, the Dutch ceded New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....
to England. It was soon renamed New York City.
Big Chief Elizabeth
Big Chief Elizabeth relates the early attempts by Elizabethan adventurers to colonise the North American continent; the book takes its title from the AlgonquianAlgonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...
Indian word ‘weroanza’, used by the indigenous population in reference to Queen Elizabeth I. It focuses on the pioneering expedition of 1585 to colonise Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island
Roanoke Island is an island in Dare County near the coast of North Carolina, United States. It was named after the historical Roanoke Carolina Algonquian people who inhabited the area in the 16th century at the time of English exploration....
in what is now North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
– an expedition that was financed and backed by the Elizabethan courtier and adventurer, Sir Walter Raleigh.
The historical reconstruction of the attempted settlement makes extensive use of eyewitness accounts written by those who occupied senior positions in Raleigh’s expedition – notably Sir Richard Grenville, Ralph Lane
Ralph Lane
Sir Ralph Lane was an English explorer of the Elizabethan era. He was part of the unsuccessful attempt in 1585 to colonize Roanoke Island, North Carolina. He also served the Crown in Ireland and was knighted by the Queen in 1593....
, John White (colonist and artist) and Thomas Harriot
Thomas Harriot
Thomas Harriot was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer, and translator. Some sources give his surname as Harriott or Hariot or Heriot. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to Great Britain and Ireland...
, and details the hardships faced by the colonists as they struggled to survive an increasingly hostile environment. It also seeks to explain the enduring mystery of the lost colonists – 115 men, women and children left behind on Roanoke Island when John White returned to England for help.
Samurai William
William Adams (sailor)
William Adams , also known in Japanese as Anjin-sama and Miura Anjin , was an English navigator who travelled to Japan and is believed to be the first Englishman ever to reach that country...
– an Elizabethan adventurer who was shipwrecked in Japan in 1600. William Adams's story inspired the 1975 best-selling novel, Shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
by James Clavell
James Clavell
James Clavell, born Charles Edmund DuMaresq Clavell was an Australian-born, British novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II veteran and prisoner of war...
., recounting the history of early European contacts with the Japanese shogun and the ultimately doomed attempts of the English East India Company
East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
to forge profitable trading links with Japan.
William Adams set sail from Rotterdam in 1598, having been employed as pilot on the Dutch ship Liefde (Love). The Liefde was one of five vessels whose ostensible purpose was to head for the Spice Islands or Maluku Islands
Maluku Islands
The Maluku Islands are an archipelago that is part of Indonesia, and part of the larger Maritime Southeast Asia region. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone...
of the East Indies
East Indies
East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...
. But the expedition's financiers also encouraged their captains to attack and ransack Spanish possessions on the coast of South America. The fleet was scattered as it emerged through the Strait of Magellan
Strait of Magellan
The Strait of Magellan comprises a navigable sea route immediately south of mainland South America and north of Tierra del Fuego...
and into the Pacific Ocean. The captain and crew of the Liefde – concerned that their cargo of broadcloth would not have a ready market in the tropical Spice Islands – took the extraordinary decision to head to Japan, a land of which they were wholly ignorant.
The voyage was fraught with hardship and suffering: atrocious weather and diminishing supplies soon have a deleterious effect on the men's health. On 12 April 1600, William Adams sighted the coast of Japan: by this time, only 24 crew members were still alive.
He soon came to the attention of the ruling shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu
Tokugawa Ieyasu
was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan , which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605, but...
, for whom he built two European style sailing vessels. Ieyasu rewarded Adams with gifts – including a country estate near the imperial capital of Edo
Edo
, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...
. Adams was also honoured with the title of hatamoto or bannerman, a prestigious position that made him a direct retainer of the shogun's court. It also linked Adams to the warrior class that had dominated Japanese history for centuries: all of Adams's fellow hatamoto were samurai. Adams was by now living like the native Japanese. He spoke the language fluently, wore a courtly kimono
Kimono
The is a Japanese traditional garment worn by men, women and children. The word "kimono", which literally means a "thing to wear" , has come to denote these full-length robes...
and changed his name to Miura Anjin (Mr Pilot). He also married a Japanese woman of good birth, even though he had left behind a wife and daughter in England.
Much of Samurai William deals with the ultimately doomed attempts of the East India Company
East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
to make use of Adams's influence at court in order to open a trading station at Hirado in south-west Japan. The account of life in Hirado is told through original sources – notably the personal diary of Richard Cocks
Richard Cocks
Richard Cocks was the head of the British East India Company trading post in Hirado, Japan, between 1613 and 1623, from its creation, and lasting to its closure due to bankruptcy....
, head of the factory in Hirado, and the journal of Captain John Saris
John Saris
John Saris was the captain of the first English voyage to Japan, in 1613, on board The Clove. As chief factor of the British East India Company's trading post in Java, Saris' mission was primarily one of seeking trade....
, commander of the ship that brought the East India Company merchants to Japan.
The author quotes widely from original documents now housed in the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
: these were edited and published by Anthony Farrington in his The English Factory in Japan.
Samurai William provides an account of Adams's death in May, 1620, and the sorry decline of the doomed trading post. It ends with the brutal suppression of Christianity in Japan and the closure of the country to foreign trade for more than two centuries.
White Gold
Salé
Salé is a city in north-western Morocco, on the right bank of the Bou Regreg river, opposite the national capital Rabat, for which it serves as a commuter town...
and Meknes
Meknes
Meknes is a city in northern Morocco, located from the capital Rabat and from Fes. It is served by the A2 expressway between those two cities and by the corresponding railway. Meknes was the capital of Morocco under the reign of Moulay Ismail , before it was relocated to Marrakech. The...
, where slaves were fattened up before being sold at auction.The author reconstructs the voyage of an English ship, the Francis, which was captured by Barbary corsairs
Barbary corsairs
The Barbary Corsairs, sometimes called Ottoman Corsairs or Barbary Pirates, were pirates and privateers who operated from North Africa, based primarily in the ports of Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, a term derived from the name of its Berber...
in 1716. He investigates the fate of the captured crew, focusing on the cabin boy, Thomas Pellow, who was to be enslaved at the court of the Moroccan sultan for the next twenty three years.
The sultan, Mulay Ismail , a cruel and capricious master: was in the midst of constructing a vast imperial palace to adorn his capital, Meknes
Meknes
Meknes is a city in northern Morocco, located from the capital Rabat and from Fes. It is served by the A2 expressway between those two cities and by the corresponding railway. Meknes was the capital of Morocco under the reign of Moulay Ismail , before it was relocated to Marrakech. The...
. The palace was being built as a conscious attempt by Mulay Ismail to outshine his French contemporary, King Louis XIV, whose Palace of Versailles
Palace of Versailles
The Palace of Versailles , or simply Versailles, is a royal château in Versailles in the Île-de-France region of France. In French it is the Château de Versailles....
had been completed a few years earlier. The sultan's slaves – among them Pellow and his 51 shipmates – were compelled to work on the palace's construction. It was gruelling physical labour made worse by the brutal slave drivers who beat any slave who slacked in his work.
Milton's narrative draws on original documents, unpublished diaries and manuscript letters housed in The National Archives and the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
manuscript collection. White Gold also makes use of the published narrative written by Pellow himself.
One English slave, Abraham Browne, left a detailed account of his life in the days prior to being sold. He was fed 'fresh vitteles [victuals] once a daye and sometimes twice in abondance, with good white breade from the market place.' Browne correctly surmised that the bread was 'to feed us up for the markett [so] that we might be in some good plight agaynst the day wee weare to be sold.' Once bought, most slaves never again saw freedom. The vast majority were to die in captivity.
Thomas Pellow had a different fate: he would eventually escape and make his return to England. He found passage aboard a ship bound for Penryn, Cornwall
Penryn, Cornwall
Penryn is a civil parish and town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated on the Penryn River about one mile northwest of Falmouth...
. When he arrived home in 1738, 23 years after leaving home, Pellow's parents did not recognise their son.
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
(modern Izmir
Izmir
Izmir is a large metropolis in the western extremity of Anatolia. The metropolitan area in the entire Izmir Province had a population of 3.35 million as of 2010, making the city third most populous in Turkey...
) in 1922. . The bloody sacking of Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
in September, 1922, and subsequent expulsion of 1,300,000 Orthodox Greeks from Turkey and 350,000 Muslims from Greece is recounted through the eyes of the Levantine community. The book won plaudits for its impartial approach to a contentious episode of history.
The story of the destruction of the second city in Ottoman Turkey and subsequent exodus of two million Greeks from Anatolia and elsewhere is told through the eyewitness accounts of those who were there, making use of unpublished diaries and letters written by Smyrna’s Levantine elite: he contends that their voices are among the few impartial ones in a highly contentious episode of history.
The book has won plaudits for its historical balance: it has been published in both Turkish and Greek. The Greek edition has received widespread coverage in the Greek press.It received publicity in the USA when the New York Times revealed that Presidential candidate John McCain
John McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
was reading it while on the campaign trail in 2008. It featured on a 2008 list of books considered by David Cameron’s Conservative Party
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
to be essential reading by any prospective Member of Parliament.
According to Milton, Smyrna
Smyrna
Smyrna was an ancient city located at a central and strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Thanks to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The ancient city is located at two sites within modern İzmir, Turkey...
occupied a unique position in the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
. Cosmopolitan, rich and tolerant in matters of religion, it was the only city in Turkey with a majority Christian population. Her unusual demographic had earned her the epithet ‘giaour
Giaour
Giaour, Gawur or Ghiaour written gâvur in modern Turkish, is an offensive ethnic slur used by Muslims in Turkey and the Balkans to describe all who are non Muslim, with particular reference to Christians like Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians, Serbs and Assyrians...
’ or ‘infidel’. Tensions between Smyrna's Christians and Muslims had first been inflamed by the First Balkan War
First Balkan War
The First Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912 to May 1913, pitted the Balkan League against the Ottoman Empire. The combined armies of the Balkan states overcame the numerically inferior and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies and achieved rapid success...
of 1912–1913. These tensions were to increase dramatically during the First World War. The majority of Smyrna’s population – including the city’s politically astute governor, Rahmi Bey – favoured the Allied cause. They hoped that Turkey, along with her Central Powers
Central Powers
The Central Powers were one of the two warring factions in World War I , composed of the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria...
partners, would lose the war. The city's political position was to be a subject of intense debate at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
. Greece’s Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos
Eleftherios Venizelos
Eleftherios Venizelos was an eminent Greek revolutionary, a prominent and illustrious statesman as well as a charismatic leader in the early 20th century. Elected several times as Prime Minister of Greece and served from 1910 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1932...
, had long dreamed of incorporating the city into a newly revived Greek Empire in Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...
– the so-called Megali Idea
Megali Idea
The Megali Idea was an irredentist concept of Greek nationalism that expressed the goal of establishing a Greek state that would encompass all ethnic Greek-inhabited areas, since large Greek populations after the restoration of Greek independence in 1830 still lived under Ottoman rule.The term...
or Great Idea, and argued his case with considerable aplomb: American President Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
and Britain’s Prime Minister David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
eventually consented to Greek troops being landed in Smyrna.
Paradise Lost chronicles the violence that followed the Greek landing through the eyewitness accounts of the Levantine community. The author offers a reappraisal of Smyrna’s first Greek governor, Aristidis Stergiadis
Aristidis Stergiadis
Aristidis Stergiadis was the Hellenic high-commissioner, or governor-general, of Smyrna from 1919 to 1922. He was selected for the post by Prime Minister Venizelos, who was a fellow Cretan. He is considered one of the darkest figures in modern Greek history...
, whose impartiality towards both Greeks and Turks won him considerable enmity amongst the local Greek population.
The Greek army was despatched into the interior of Anatolia
Anatolia
Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...
in an attempt to crush the fledgling army of the Turkish Nationalists, led by Mustafa Kemal
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was an Ottoman and Turkish army officer, revolutionary statesman, writer, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey....
. The book provides a graphic account of this doomed military campaign: by the summer of 1922, the Greek army was desperately short of supplies, weaponry and money. Kemal seized the moment and attacked.
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
ines and Americans who witnessed the violence first hand, in which the author seeks to apportion blame and discover who started the conflagration that was to cause the city’s near-total destruction. The book' also investigates the cynical role played by the commanders of the 21 Allied battleships in the bay of Smyrna, who were under orders to rescue only their own nationals, abandoning to their fate the hundreds of thousands of Greeks and Armenian refugees gathered on the quayside.
Many were saved only when a lone American charity worker named Asa Jennings commandeered a fleet of Greek ships and ordered them to sail into the bay of Smyrna. Jennings mission was, contends Milton, one of the greatest humanitarian rescue missions of the 20th century.
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 ends with the exodus of two million Greeks from Turkey and the expulsion of 400,000 Turks from Greece – an exchange of population that was enshrined in law in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne
Treaty of Lausanne
The Treaty of Lausanne was a peace treaty signed in Lausanne, Switzerland on 24 July 1923, that settled the Anatolian and East Thracian parts of the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The treaty of Lausanne was ratified by the Greek government on 11 February 1924, by the Turkish government on 31...
.
Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War
Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War is Giles Milton’s seventh work of narrative non-fiction. It recounts the early life of Wolfram AicheleWolfram Aichele
Wolfram Aïchele - known as Wolfram - is an internationally acclaimed artist from Baden-Wurttemberg in Southern Germany....
, a young artist whose formative years were spent under the shadow of the Third Reich.
Wolfram Aichele’s parents were deeply hostile to the Nazis. Many of their interests, including freemasonry
Freemasonry
Freemasonry is a fraternal organisation that arose from obscure origins in the late 16th to early 17th century. Freemasonry now exists in various forms all over the world, with a membership estimated at around six million, including approximately 150,000 under the jurisdictions of the Grand Lodge...
and the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Steiner
Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner was an Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, and esotericist. He gained initial recognition as a literary critic and cultural philosopher...
, conflicted with the politics of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. Wolfram’s father, the artist Erwin Aichele
Erwin Aichele
Erwin Aichele was a German painter and animal artist from Baden-Wurttemberg in Southern Germany.His life and work was the subject of a 1988 monograph, Der Tiermaler Erwin Aichele by Hans Schöner -Early years:...
, managed to avoid joining the Nazi Party. But he could do nothing to prevent his son being drafted into the Reichsarbeitsdienst
Reichsarbeitsdienst
The Reichsarbeitsdienst was an institution established by Nazi Germany as an agency to reduce unemployment, similar to the relief programs in other countries. During the Second World War it was an auxiliary formation which provided support for the Wehrmacht.The RAD was formed during July 1934 as...
or Reich Labour Service in 1942, the first inevitable step into the Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
.
Aichele was sent to the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
and Crimea
Crimea
Crimea , or the Autonomous Republic of Crimea , is a sub-national unit, an autonomous republic, of Ukraine. It is located on the northern coast of the Black Sea, occupying a peninsula of the same name...
, where he contracted a life-threatening strain of diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
. In 1944 he was sent to Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
in France, where he served in the 77th Infantry Division
77th Infantry Division (Germany)
The 77th Infantry Division was a German military unit which served during World War II.-Operational history:...
as a ‘funker’ or Morse code
Morse code
Morse code is a method of transmitting textual information as a series of on-off tones, lights, or clicks that can be directly understood by a skilled listener or observer without special equipment...
operator. He took part in the German army’s doomed attempt to halt American troops from breaking out of their beachhead on Utah Beach
Utah Beach
Utah Beach was the code name for the right flank, or westernmost, of the Allied landing beaches during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, as part of Operation Overlord on 6 June 1944...
.
Wolfram Aichele survived a massive aerial bombardment in June, 1944. Two months later, he surrendered to American forces and was a prisoner of war, first in England and then in America, where he was interned at Camp Gruber
Camp Gruber
Camp Gruber Maneuver Training Center is an Oklahoma Army National Guard training facility used for Summer field training exercises and for monthly drills. It covers a total of .The base is named after General Edmund L...
in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
. When he returned to Germany in 1946, he discovered that his home town, Pforzheim
Pforzheim
Pforzheim is a town of nearly 119,000 inhabitants in the state of Baden-Württemberg, southwest Germany at the gate to the Black Forest. It is world-famous for its jewelry and watch-making industry. Until 1565 it was the home to the Margraves of Baden. Because of that it gained the nickname...
, had been obliterated in the Royal Air Force
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...
’s firestorm raid of 23 February 1945.
Giles Milton’s book received widespread critical acclaim for its use of original unpublished source material and its account of the lives of ordinary Germans. In America, the book is published under the title The Boy Who Went to War: The Story of a Reluctant German Soldier in World War II.
Critical reception
The Riddle and the KnightBernard Hamilton, writing in the Times Literary Supplement, noted: 'Although he [Milton] makes no claim to be writing an academic study... he has clearly done a good deal of research into published sources and unpublished records.' He adds: 'Were Sir John alive today, I am sure he would have read Milton's book.'
Anthony Sattin
Anthony Sattin
Anthony Sattin is a British journalist and broadcaster and the author of several highly-acclaimed books of history and travel. He completed a literature degree at the University of Warwick and an MA in creative writing at the University of East Anglia...
, writing in The Sunday Times, said of the book: 'In the style of true medieval quest, each answer poses another question.' He added: 'The one thing that is irrefutably clear by the final page is that Mandeville's argument that the world was round had an enormous influence on the age of exploration.'
Jason Goodwin
Jason Goodwin
Jason Goodwin is a British writer and historian. He studied Byzantine history at Cambridge University. Following the success of A Time For Tea: Travels in China and India in Search of Tea, he walked from Poland to Istanbul, Turkey...
, reviewing the book in Punch magazine, concluded: 'We travel with him [Milton] in the end because he has done his research in the British Library... Milton has scaled a mountain of research, and the twist he gives Mandeville's story is made with elegance and conviction.'
But Philip Glazebrook
Philip Glazebrook
Philip Kirkland Glazebrook, DSO was a British businessman and Conservative politician.He was the son of John K. and Cecilia Glazebrook of Twemlow Hall, Holmes Chapel, Cheshire, and was educated at Eton College and New College, Oxford. He was a partner in the firm of Spurrier and Glazebrook...
, writing in The Spectator, felt that Sir John Mandeville remained a shadowy figure, in spite of Milton's best efforts. 'The trouble is, I never really believed in Sir John, could never visualise him, never feel an intriguing presence at the heart of the book.'
Nathaniel's Nutmeg
Martin Booth
Martin Booth
Martin Booth was a prolific British novelist and poet. He also worked as a teacher and screenwriter, and was the founder of the Sceptre Press.-Early life:...
, writing of Giles Milton’s book in The Times, concluded: ‘His research is impeccable and his narrative reads in part like a modern-day Robert Louis Stevenson novel.’
Nicholas Fearn in The Independent on Sunday wrote: ‘This book is a magnificent piece of popular history. It is an English story, but its heroism is universal. This is a book to read, reread, then, aside from the X-rated penultimate chapter, read again to your children.’
In The Spectator, Philip Hensher
Philip Hensher
Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.Hensher was born in South London, although he spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence in Sheffield, attending Tapton School. He did his undergraduate degree at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford before attending...
wrote: ‘To write a book which makes the reader, after finishing it, sit in a trance, lost in his passionate desire to pack a suitcase and go, somehow, to the fabulous place – that, in the end, is something one would give a sack of nutmegs for.’
Time Magazine said of Nathaniel’s Nutmeg: ‘Milton spins a fascinating tale of swashbuckling adventure, courage and cruelty, as nations and entrepreneurs fought for a piece of the nutmeg action.’
Big Chief Elizabeth
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
, writing in The New York Times, commented: ‘In an exceptionally pungent, amusing and accessible historical account, Giles Milton brings readers right into the midst of these colonists and their daunting American adventure... there’s no question that Mr Milton’s research has been prodigious and that it yields an entertaining, richly informative look at the past.’ 23 November 2000.
Many reviews – among them those published by the above-mentioned The New York Times, The Daily Mail, The Times, The Financial Times The New Statesman and The Observer – singled out Milton’s exceptional talent in making use of original source material.
In Britain’s Daily Mail, Peter Lewis
Peter Lewis
Peter B. Lewis is the Cleveland, Ohio-area based chairman of Progressive Insurance Companies.Lewis currently resides in Coconut Grove, Florida.-Biography:...
wrote: ‘This grippingly told true adventure story is made all the more immediate by using lavish quotations in wild Elizabethan spelling.’
The Spectator also praised the author for bringing history to life. ‘Milton has a terrific eye for the kind of detail that can bring the past vividly to life off the page,’ wrote reviewer, Steve King. ‘He revels in the grim realities of the early colonists’ experience. There’s disease, famine, torture, cannibalism and every kind of deprivation imaginable. Milton’s findness for the faintly off-colour vignette makes for stomach-turning but compelling reading.’
The Sunday Times concluded: ‘Milton has amassed an impressive amount of information from original sources, and it is evidence from Elizabethan journals that makes this such a vivid story.’
There were a few detractors. Writing in The Guardian, Sukhdev Sandhu expressed admiration for Milton’s writing talents. ‘It’s almost impossible to summarise Milton’s book, from which marvelous, vivid stories spill out like swagsack booty.’ But he noted that the book did little to deconstruct the realities in Imperialism. ‘He [Milton] is in love with deeds not discourse, harking back to popular 19th century historians like J A Froude.
And John Adamson
John Adamson
John Adamson was a Scottish minister and academic. He was Principal of the University of Edinburgh from 1623 until his death.-Life:...
, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, also had reservations about the book. In an article entitled, ‘’History: the director’s cut’’, he argued that the book did not place enough demands on the reader. ‘All you have to do is sit back with your tub of popcorn and let the story unfold.’
Samurai William
Matthew Redhead, writing in The Times, said: ‘Giles Milton is a man who can take an event from history and make it come alive.... He has a genius for lively prose, and an appreciation for historical credibility. With Samurai William, he has crafted an inspiration for those of us who believe that history can be exciting and entertaining.’
In The Sunday Times, Katie Hickman
Katie Hickman
Katie Hickman is an English novelist and travel writer.Hickman studied English literature at Pembroke College, Oxford. The daughter of a diplomat, she began her career as a travel writer. Her first book was Dreams of the Peaceful Dragon , an account of a journey across Bhutan...
concluded: ‘Giles Milton has once again shown himself to be a master of historical narrative. The story of William Adams is a gripping tale of Jacobean derring-do, a fizzing, real-life Boy’s Own adventure underpinned by genuine scholarship.’
Writing in The New York Review, the scholarly critic Jonathan Spence
Jonathan Spence
Jonathan D. Spence is a British-born historian and public intellectual specializing in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several...
was impressed by Milton’s use of documentary source material. ‘Giles Milton presents [Adams’s story] with undisguised gusto. His notes and bibliography make it clear that he has absorbed much of the voluminous secondary literature on this period and on Adams himself.’
Anthony Thwaite
Anthony Thwaite
Anthony Simon Thwaite, OBE, is an English poet and writer. He is married to the writer Ann Thwaite. He was awarded the OBE in 1992, for services to poetry. He was mainly brought up in Yorkshire and currently lives in Norfolk....
, writing in The Sunday Telegraph, agreed that the book strength lay in its source material. ‘Giles Milton has been assiduous in searching through all the published sources ... if it brings more readers to the marvelous story of how West discovered East, and East discovered West, that’s good.’
In The New York Times, Susan Chira
Susan Chira
Susan Deborah Chira is an American journalist. She has been foreign editor of The New York Times since 2004.She was raised in Rye, NY and attended Phillips Andover Academy, in Andover, MA, where she graduated in 1976. She received her BA at Harvard University in 1980, graduating summa cum laude...
said that Milton had written ‘a vivid, scrupulously researched biography ... it is a sheer pleasure to read Milton’s vivid portraits of the small corps of foreigners who traded at the sufferance of Japanese feudal lords.’
The Washington Times agreed: ‘He [Milton] recounts in graphic detail – much from primary sources – the astounding hardships and hardihood of those explorers of a dangerous unknown.’
White Gold
Writing in The Independent, Benedict Allen
Benedict Allen
Benedict Colin Allen is a British traveller. He is best known for his survival modus operandi: tapping into local, indigenous knowledge above reliance on modern inventions. His approach is to present himself as ready to learn, like an infant; the communities that he visits take him under their...
picked it as one of his Books of the Year (2004). 'A romping tale of 18th-century sailors enslaved by Barbary seafarers and sold to a Moroccan tyrant. It has all the usual Miltonian ingredients: swift narrative and swashbuckling high-drama laid on a bed of historical grit.’
In his review in The Observer, Dan Neill, felt the strength of the book was its use of contemporary documents. ‘Drawing on letters, journals and manuscripts written by the slaves.... Milton has produced a disturbing account of the barbaric splendor of the imperial Moroccan court, which he brings to life with considerable panache... White Gold is an engrossing story, expertly told.’
In The Daily Mail, Peter Lewis
Peter Lewis
Peter B. Lewis is the Cleveland, Ohio-area based chairman of Progressive Insurance Companies.Lewis currently resides in Coconut Grove, Florida.-Biography:...
called the book an ‘extraordinary, eye-opening and most readable revelation of a dark place and shameful episode in our history.’
Tim Ecott, writing in The Guardian, said the strength of the book lay in its two magnificent central characters, Thomas Pellow and Mulay Ismail. He concluded: ‘Milton has ingeniously retrieved and polished a hidden nugget from the remarkable treasure house of British history.’
Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s review in The Sunday Times concluded: ‘Milton’s story could scarcely be more action-packed and its setting and subsidiary characters are as fantastic as its events... Milton conjures up a horrifying but enthralling vision of the court of Moulay Ismail.’
In The Sunday Telegraph, Justin Marozzi
Justin Marozzi
Justin Marozzi is an English journalist, historian and travel writer. He studied at Cambridge University where he gained a Starred Double First in History in 1993. He has also earned degrees in broadcast journalism from Cardiff University and in international relations from the University of...
wrote: ‘White Gold is lively and diligently researched, a chronicle of cruelty on a grand scale... an unfailingly entertaining piece of history.’
Philip Hensher
Philip Hensher
Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.Hensher was born in South London, although he spent the majority of his childhood and adolescence in Sheffield, attending Tapton School. He did his undergraduate degree at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford before attending...
, writing in The Spectator, was sceptical of Milton’s portrayal of Moulay Ismail’s court, which he felt was too consonant with Western ideas of orientalism: ‘It is all a little too much like a fantasy by Ingres,’ he wrote. But he praised White Gold for being ‘extensively researched’ and concluded that it was ‘an exciting and sensational account of a really swashbuckling historical episode.’
Paradise Lost
Jeremy Seal, writing in The Daily Telegraph, called Paradise Lost: 'A compelling story… Milton's considerable achievement is to deliver with characteristic clarity and colour this complex epic narrative, Milton brings a commendable impartiality to his thoroughly researched book.
William Dalrymple, writing in The Sunday Times, praised the book for both its impartial approach and its use of original source material written by the Levantine families of Smyrna.
'It is the lives of these dynasties, recorded in their diaries and letters, that form the focus for Giles Milton’s brilliant re-creation of the last days of Smyrna . . . Milton has written a grimly memorable book about one of the most important events in this process. It is well paced, even-handed and cleverly focused: through the prism of the Anglo-Levantines, he reconstructs both the prewar Edwardian glory of Smyrna and its tragic end. He also clears up, once and for all, who burnt Smyrna, producing irrefutable evidence that the Turkish army brought in thousands of barrels from the Petroleum Company of Smyrna and poured them over the streets and houses of all but the Turkish quarter.
The Spectator and Literary Review also praised the book for its even-handed approach to the controversial sack of Smyrna.
Writing in the Spectator, Philip Mansel
Philip Mansel
Philip Mansel is a British historian and the author of a number of books about revolutionary and post-revolutionary France and the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire...
called the book 'an indictment of nationalism … Milton has gone where biographers of Atatürk and historians of Turkey, who often want Turkish official support, have feared to tread. He has reproduced accounts by individual Armenian, Greek and foreign eye-witnesses, as well as British sailors’ and consuls’ accounts. It is a much needed corrective to official history.
Adam Le Bor, writing in the Literary Review, said: ‘Milton brings the past alive in this vivid, detailed and poignant book by drawing on family letters and archives, and first-hand interviews with those elderly survivors who remember Smyrna’s glory days.’
Alev Adil, writing in The Independent, said 'Giles Milton's engrossing account of the events leading up to the destruction of the city in 1922 is based largely on the previously unpublished letters and diaries of these Levantine dynasties. Milton's book celebrates the heroism of individuals who put lives before ideologies.'
Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War
James Delinpole writing in The Daily Mail called the book ‘idiosyncratic and utterly fascinating… what this book captures well is how, little by little, ordinary Germans were bullied and cajoled into acquiescing with Hitler's insane plans.’
For Daily Express reviewer Christopher Silvester, Milton shows how ‘insidiously Nazism encroached on the daily lives of German citizens… as a portrait of how these civilised individuals were able to survive, this is invaluable.’
Hester Vaizy’s review, ‘A Conflict of Loyalty’ published in The Spectator, 21 May 2011, favourably compared the book with standard histories of Nazi Germany: ‘Milton’s account reveals that Germans, too, experienced real suffering in wartime… without forgetting or denying the crimes perpetrated in Nazi death camps, Milton’s close analysis of the experiences of Germans demonstrates that they too could be victims of the war.’
In his BBC History Magazine article, Roger Moorhouse called Wolfram ‘a very valid and interesting book, which offers an illuminating insight into the experience of ‘ordinary’ Germans living in ‘small-town’ Germany.’