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The Tartan Turban

Public Lecture Series with John Keay

Like the travels of Marco Polo, those of Alexander Gardner clip the white line between credible adventure and creative invention. Either he is the nineteenth century’s most intrepid traveler or its most egregious fantasist, or a bit of both. Contemporaries generally believed him; posterity became more skeptical. And as with Polo, the investigation of Gardner’s story enlarged man’s understanding of the world and upped the pace of scientific and political exploration.

Before more reputable explorers notched up their own discoveries in innermost Asia, this lone Scots-American had roamed the deserts of Turkestan, ridden round the world’s most fearsome knot of mountains and fought in Afghanistan ‘for the good cause of right against wrong.’ From the Caspian to Tibet and from Kandahar to Kashgar, Gardner had seen it all. At the time, the 1820s, no other outsider had managed anything remotely comparable. When word of his feats filtered out, geographers were agog.

Historians were more intrigued by what followed. After 13 years as a white-man-gone-native in Central Asia, Gardner reemerged as a colonel of artillery in the employ of India’s last great native empire.

He witnessed the death throes of that Sikh empire at close quarters and, sparing no gruesome detail, recorded his own part in the bloodshed (the very same featuring as the exploits of ‘Alick’ Gardner in the ‘Flashman’ series).

Fame finally caught up with him during his long retirement in Kashmir. Dressed in tartan yet still living as a native, he mystified visiting dignitaries and found a ready audience for the tales of his adventurous past. But one mystery he certainly took to the grave: the whereabouts of his accumulated fortune has still to be discovered.

Using much original material, including newly discovered papers by Gardner himself, renowned historian John Keay will take us from the American West to the Asian East to unravel the greatest enigma in the history of travel.John Keay is a British historian, journalist, radio presenter and lecturer specializing in popular histories of India, the Far East and China, often with a particular focus on their colonization and exploration by Europeans. In particular, he is widely seen as a pre-eminent historian of British India.

He is the author of over twenty-five books, including The Royal Geographical Society History of World Exploration, The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company, India: A History, China: A History, and When Men and Mountains Meet: The Explorers of the Western Himalayas, 1820–75.

He also writes regularly for a number of prominent publications in Britain and Asia. He began his career with The Economist as a political correspondent, and was a contributor to BBC radio.

The Economist has called him “a gifted non-academic historian,” the Yorkshire Post has called him “one of our most outstanding historians,” The Independent has called his writing “exquisite” and The Guardian has described his historical analysis as “forensic” and his writing as “restrained yet powerful.”

Keay is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society & the Royal Literary Fund, and he has received several major honors including the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. He read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, and now lives in Argyll in the West Highlands of Scotland while traveling widely.











When: Mon., Oct. 1, 2018 at 7:00 pm
Where: The Explorers Club
46 E. 70th St.
212-628-8383
Price: $25
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Public Lecture Series with John Keay

Like the travels of Marco Polo, those of Alexander Gardner clip the white line between credible adventure and creative invention. Either he is the nineteenth century’s most intrepid traveler or its most egregious fantasist, or a bit of both. Contemporaries generally believed him; posterity became more skeptical. And as with Polo, the investigation of Gardner’s story enlarged man’s understanding of the world and upped the pace of scientific and political exploration.

Before more reputable explorers notched up their own discoveries in innermost Asia, this lone Scots-American had roamed the deserts of Turkestan, ridden round the world’s most fearsome knot of mountains and fought in Afghanistan ‘for the good cause of right against wrong.’ From the Caspian to Tibet and from Kandahar to Kashgar, Gardner had seen it all. At the time, the 1820s, no other outsider had managed anything remotely comparable. When word of his feats filtered out, geographers were agog.

Historians were more intrigued by what followed. After 13 years as a white-man-gone-native in Central Asia, Gardner reemerged as a colonel of artillery in the employ of India’s last great native empire.

He witnessed the death throes of that Sikh empire at close quarters and, sparing no gruesome detail, recorded his own part in the bloodshed (the very same featuring as the exploits of ‘Alick’ Gardner in the ‘Flashman’ series).

Fame finally caught up with him during his long retirement in Kashmir. Dressed in tartan yet still living as a native, he mystified visiting dignitaries and found a ready audience for the tales of his adventurous past. But one mystery he certainly took to the grave: the whereabouts of his accumulated fortune has still to be discovered.

Using much original material, including newly discovered papers by Gardner himself, renowned historian John Keay will take us from the American West to the Asian East to unravel the greatest enigma in the history of travel.John Keay is a British historian, journalist, radio presenter and lecturer specializing in popular histories of India, the Far East and China, often with a particular focus on their colonization and exploration by Europeans. In particular, he is widely seen as a pre-eminent historian of British India.

He is the author of over twenty-five books, including The Royal Geographical Society History of World Exploration, The Honourable Company: A History of the English East India Company, India: A History, China: A History, and When Men and Mountains Meet: The Explorers of the Western Himalayas, 1820–75.

He also writes regularly for a number of prominent publications in Britain and Asia. He began his career with The Economist as a political correspondent, and was a contributor to BBC radio.

The Economist has called him “a gifted non-academic historian,” the Yorkshire Post has called him “one of our most outstanding historians,” The Independent has called his writing “exquisite” and The Guardian has described his historical analysis as “forensic” and his writing as “restrained yet powerful.”

Keay is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society & the Royal Literary Fund, and he has received several major honors including the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. He read Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford, and now lives in Argyll in the West Highlands of Scotland while traveling widely.

Buy tickets/get more info now