Publication of the week:

PROFESSOR GEOFFREY ALDERMAN

Monday 28 January 2008

Geoffrey Alderman & Colin Holmes, "The Burton Book", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 18.1 (January 2008), 1-13.

In the summer of 2001 a major controversy erupted following a Jewish Chronicle report (18 May 2001) that the Honorary Officers and Executive Committee of the Board of Deputies of British Jews had decided to offer for sale, at Messrs Christie's auction rooms in London, a hitherto unpublished work by the 19th-century explorer, writer and diplomat Sir Richard Francis Burton. In the event, and in the glare of worldwide media attention, the reserve price of £150,000 was not reached (6 June 2001). The lot - one of the very few Burton manuscripts still in private hands - was therefore withdrawn and returned, amidst yet further controversy, to the safe-keeping of the Board. In this article the authors trace the history of this work - in which Burton alleged that Jews engaged in human sacrifice - from its largely plagiarised creation in the early 1870s, and offer some thoughts on its contemporary significance.

Geoffrey Alderman is Professor of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of Buckingham. His many books include Modern British Jewry (2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).