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.
Google " William Cross FSA Scot"
