The story of the 1882 Palmer Sinai Expedition, a spying and terrorist
mission that ended in the murder of its participants and was one of the
great cause célèbre of the nineteenth century. Just before sunset on
August 8th 1882 HMS Cockatrice, a small paddle wheel gunboat, appeared
off the Egyptian shore. A rowing boat was lowered down its side and
slowly moved towards the beach. On its arrival, six men and a teenage
boy alighted. Three of the group were British, all dressed as Arabs, two
were Bedouin tribesmen, one a Jew and one a Syrian. The following
morning, this mismatched party set off for the desert, taking with them
two boxes of dynamite and £3,000 in gold coin. Five of them were never
seen again. An historical 'who-done-it', an adventure story, a history
of the Anglo-Egyptian War and a biography of those involved in the
controversy, /These Chivalrous Brothers/ explores the gulf between the
Imperial ideal and reality and provides an insight into the character of
the men who built the Empire. Through the biographies, it also throws
light on such disparate topics as the early history of spying,
spiritualism, female hysteria, biblical archaeology, various African
uprisings, the Boer War and the hunt for 'Jack the Ripper'.