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The life of Sir Harry Perry Robinson (1859-1930) unfolds like a Boy's Own adventure. Born in India and educated at Oxford, Harry fled to the United States to make his name and fortune. After a stint in the gold mines of the American West, he became a major force in the railroad industry and helped to elect a U.S. President. Returning to England, Harry had a celebrated career as a book publisher (discovering the American author Jack London) and as a journalist for The Times, serving as the oldest correspondent during the First World War and going on to have one of the scoops of the century: the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1923.
Harry's incredible journey unfolds against the background of his equally adventurous and accomplished extended family. His father, Julian, was an Indian Army chaplain and newspaper editor. His aunt was a suffragette and personal friend of both Disraeli and Gladstone. Brother Philip was a dashing foreign correspondent (arrested as a spy during the Spanish-American War) and Editor of The Sunday Times. Brother Edward ('Kay'), founder of the British Empire Naturalists' Association, gave Rudyard Kipling his first writing job. And troubled sister Valence was rumoured to end her days living in a barrel on a roadside in Bulawayo.
The youngest member of this English Family Robinson, Harry was a born adventurer and the ultimate witness to history, whose life offers a new window and perspective on his times: the 1884 American gold rush, the 1896 US Presidential election, the nascent 'special relationship' between Britain and the United States, reportage at the Western Front, the controversy over the relatively new Olympic Games, and the media frenzy surrounding the Earl of Carnarvon in Egypt, to name only the most important.
