PRESS RELEASE BY AUTHOR WILLIAM CROSS, FSA SCOT

BRITISH  SOCIETY AUTHOR REVEALS SHOCKING FACTS ABOUT  ITV’S TUTANKHAMUN CHARACTERS CARNARVON AND CARTER

Shocking Facts In New Book On Lord Carnarvon And Howard Carter who featured in a recent  British Television Drama Series  “ New Tutankhamun “

The book features untold facts about  Lord Carnarvon, and his side kick Howard Carter, the discoverers of the tomb of Boy King, Tutankhamun.

The Book strips away the conventional story to look at their disturbed childhood.

British Society Author William Cross, FSA Scot    offers a new book "Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited :The hidden truths and doomed relationships" .

The book  reveals new, touching facts about the early life of the men behind Tutankhamun's discovery. The book also advances to the great find itself and the ultimate fate of the two discoverers.

Suggesting that " Everything we are is shaped in childhood", often resulting in a dysfunctional adult, the book highlights the co-incidences of major childhood trauma suffered by the central figures. At aged 9, Prince Tutankhamun found himself King of Egypt, Lord Carnarvon lost his beloved mother, who was soon replaced by a young step mother. Carter's case is the most shocking, at aged 8 he witnessed the suicide of his elder brother Horace, a promising 17 year old who killed himself by drinking cleaning fluid.

All were products of inbreeding, thus the three figures were not surprisingly born disabled, Tutankhamun had girlish hips, a club foot, he was possibly a consumptive or epileptic. Carnarvon was a sickly child with bad genes, lung disease and learning difficulties, at Eton College he was already an insatiable gambler. Carter was "a bad herniary case" who had to be "bandaged like a mummy" so frail that parts of his body fused, he was unable to go to school, do any sports or play games with other children.

Echoing the hunchback King Richard III who in his pains and woes complains at being "deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time into this breathing world, scarce half made up" Carter uses a similar phrase for himself, that "Nature thrusts some of us into the world miserably incomplete".

As babies none tasted their mother's milk, but were fed by wet nurses. Carnarvon's wet nurses were hired as nursery maids as roughneck as the estate gardeners. Carter's wet nurse was a female cousin from Swaffham in Norfolk, a Carter family stronghold. In the case of Prince Tutankhamun archaeologists have traced wall paintings of his wet nurse Maia feeding him, she is thought to be his sister.

 Wet nurses were employed when the mother was unable or chose not to nurse the child herself. Lady Evelyn Herbert of Highclere Castle ( backdrop to TV's Downton Abbey) was a political hostess for her Cabinet Minister husband, hers and Martha Carter's lives ( as the wife of a Royal Society Artist) were too full of social activity to breast feed; Tutankhamun's feeding was set by ancient Royal custom.

The author concludes that Howard Carter suffered a form of autism, his mother Martha was a classic 'refrigerator mother' ( one of the early recognised causes of autism, although it is now thought the condition is more genetically driven). Autism accounts for Carter's mood swings, furious temper and tantrums famously after the affray with French tourists at Sakkarah in 1905 after he lock up Tutankhamun's Tomb in 1924 and refused everyone entry.

The Author makes a number of controversial assertions. Based on information from correspondents, including Tony Leadbetter, the godson of Lady Almina, Carnarvon's wife, ( who lived with the Countess of Carnarvon for 30 years ) he revisits the facts about the famous death of Lord Carnarvon in 1923. The evidence suggests that the Earl was suffering from a terminal illness, there was no mosquito bite. Almina, Lady Carnarvon ( a nurse in the Great War) rushed to the Earl's bedside ( from England, with a mysterious doctor) and almost certainly assisted a peaceful end.

The book examines the development years and private world of Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter closely scrutinising their relationship. In revisiting the story of the discovery of the Tomb and the aftermath the Author challenges the conventional claims of how and why Lord Carnarvon first turned his attention to Egyptology, to Carter's years in the wilderness after resigning as an Inspector in the Antiquities Service and why Howard was blocked for a knighthood by King George V.

William Cross comments on the ITV's Tutankhamun : " ITV have rattled the history and chronology of Howard Carter and George Carnarvon. It is not about artistic licence or an interpretation of the story as this series is largely FICTION based on using the historical figures and underlying narrative of whose who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb. In such fiction no one can hear the historians scream because someone, somewhere perhaps for a school exam puts down the fiction from TV over the facts from a history book If this series wishes to be judged as history it is a non-starter, it fails as an historical account. So close to the centenary of the discovery of the Tomb it is a missed chance and telling the story without embellishments."

  

“Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited :The hidden truths and doomed relationships” by William Cross ( published on 20 October 2016 by Book Midden Publishing, Newport, Gwent), ISBN 978 1905914364

Further Enquiries: Contact William Cross by e-mail. 

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