if you want access to bonus episodes reading Back to Empire. I am William Dalrymple. And I am still Anita Arland. Nothing changed. Nothing has changed as that. So we have just got the corridor. onto the steam sloop Medea.
And this cursed diamond is crossing the waves at speed towards Great Britain and Queen Victoria, but you won't be surprised to hear that it is not an easy voyage no it really really isn't an easy voyage because just days into this voyage and we're talking now just to remind you of dates here this is april 1850 so It is crossing the water only a few days in. the first person falls down dead.
Then another. Then another. Cholera has broken out on a ship. Now, that is a death knell for a ship at sea because people are at close quarters. They cannot quarantine or separate. So it can take out an entire crew. So there's panic on the ship as well, on the Medea. And Lockyer says, look, don't panic. Don't panic, boys. It's OK. Don't panic. Nobody panic. We are very, very close to Mauritius.
So we will go and we will disembark on Mauritius. Really not far. I mean, honestly, this is just nonsensical. So we'll be fine. We'll get to Mauritius and we'll be okay. They get to the territorial waters around Mauritius and Mauritius trains their guns on this ship saying, I'm sorry, plague ship. Do you think you're coming up? You're not.
And if you come any closer, we will fire, we'll torpedo you out of the sea. And, well, the equivalent, we'll shoot you out of the sea. What would you say? Cannon you out of the sea? Blow you out of the sea. Okay, we will blow you out of the sea. So this panic-stricken crew cannot disembark. They can't separate from each other. All Mauritius will do is send them a modicum of water, fresh water, a little bit of medicine, not very much, and a few provisions.
And Paul Edlock here has to say, OK, boys, onwards. It's OK. Don't panic. Don't panic. We're going to make this. We are made of stern stuff. We're going to be fine. And they're still dropping out flights at this point? Well, I mean, one presumes so. We don't have detailed medical accounts from this, apart from the references to cholera in the first few days of the outbreak.
and the Mauritians' reaction to it. But then Lockyer says, right, we're going to go on. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. It's going to be fine. They sail into one of the worst typhoons in a decade, which almost breaks. they say, the mainsail.
So, you know, this poor ship is battered, buffeted. Everyone thinks, first of all, they're going to die of cholera. Then they think they're going to drown at sea. And it carries on and it limps on and it limps on. And it finally, this beleaguered ship. reaches British territorial waters and the sailors must have been like oh thank goodness never thought this would happen and the first of the Koh-Noor's malign axe begins to
begins to unfold on British soil. Well, isn't it odd? Because it just enters British territorial waters and the first of a number of unfortunate incidents takes place. So Robert Peel, who's a former Prime Minister of Great Britain... and who is also a favourite of Queen Victoria because he's so very kind to Prince Albert. He's one of their chief allies when Albert's not very popular in the court. It is Peel who paves the way to make him acceptable in the British court.
Peel is an experienced horseman. He is out riding on Constitution Hill and he is thrown by his horse, which is weird and unfortunate. But the horse then trips over Peel and falls on Peel. And kills him. And kills him, which is just bizarre. This is the day that the ship has entered British territorial waters. British territorial waters. As if that is not odd enough.
So anyway, the ship unloads its precious cargo and it's only then that the crew find out what is on board the ship and they must go, oh my, that's what it was. This damn stone was trying to drag us all to hell. with members of the East India Company as a retinue. do a ride to London they've got to get the stone to present it to Queen Victoria as it's getting closer it's like just a day out from reaching Queen Victoria In the crowd, a man called Robert Francis Pate while she's visiting her uncle.
in London, leaps out of the crowd and hits her over the head. It's sort of deemed to be quite a bungled either assassination attempt or the act of a madman, but he slams her over the head with a metal-tipped cane. So when she finally does accept the Koh-i-Noor, she does so with a massive shiner. She's got a black eye. Which maybe explains why she's not, if you look at her diary entries, because Queen Victoria is a great diarist. When she writes about the Coen, it isn't with...
That much enthusiasm. It also explains why not long after this you get Wilkie Collins writing The Moonstone because these stories begin to circulate. Tell people about The Moonstone because not everyone will have read it. So The Moonstone is... supposed to be the first ever detective story and it's the story of a cursed Indian gem which comes to Britain. And that creates havoc around it and then is stolen. And it turns out that the...
People who've stoned it are the stone's original guardians who bring it back to India. And the novel closes with the stone back in the idol. An idol. I mean, it's a very loosely disguised version of the current. And so... And what's fascinating is that this is a trope which, you know, then enters European and British and European literature, and we get cast tones, you know, as late as Tintin in the 1950s and 1960s.
But the origin of it is not just the Koh-i-Noor itself, but a whole trope in ancient Indian literature where diamonds are considered to be inauspicious.
to the Bhagavad Quran. Yeah, so, I mean, you know, the first episode that we've done on this podcast is filled with all of that mythology, if you want to go back, if you haven't listened to it yet. But this begins to circulate in the British press. And the British press is, on one hand, very excited that there's symbol of empire and symbol of the bounty of India and it's I think quite important to sort of think back to that time, because today I think people are very aware that you know looting
colonial loot and war is a very bad thing. There's been a lot of reporting from Ukraine about the Russians taking stuff from museums in southern Ukraine. There's also been... Obviously, a huge amount of, there are movies, there are novels, there's whole libraries written on the Nazi looting of Jewish art treasures during the Second World War. The Italians are obsessed about Napoleon pinching their art treasures and taking them to the Louvre. And...
One of the things that, you know, all this raises is, is there any moral distinction between the Nazis taking a fantastic... Chagall or some extraordinary art treasure from a house in the Warsaw ghetto in 1940 or 1941. and the British running off with the Koh-i-Noor or the throne of Ranjit Singh or any of the other things that lie around the V&A or the British Museum in the 19th century.
We'll come back to this at the end of this issue, but it's just, I think, worth placing this here, that this is This is very tricky territory. And while it makes a very jolly narrative, and you and I have greatly enjoyed researching this story and the... and all the dark incidents that are alleged to be around the stone, some directly connected with the stone, some like the cholera, you know, possibly are completely...
accidental happening. Nonetheless, this is something which impacts on the British public. And they are very excited about the arrival of the Stone. The stone's great apogee comes shortly afterwards, doesn't it? It does, it does. But just before that, I mean, you're absolutely right about this kind of, you know, the swirling mythology of the Koh-i-Noor and its curse.
is so prevalent at this time, not just among the British people, but the monarch. So Queen Victoria gets really quite nervous about taking possession of this diamond. And there are letters that are going back and forth from Queen Victoria. To India. Is it cursed? Is this thing cursed? Is it cursed? Can you please assure me that it's not cursed? And lots of old Indian hands write letters. I think Richard Burton, for example, the great explorer of the Hejaz and one of the archetypal Raj.
sort of adventurers. He sends letters to the monarch at this point. And so all these old Indian hands are sort of brought out of their clubs and dusted down. Can she wear it? Can she wear it? Is it all right? And at one point, Dalhousie gets so frustrated. by this nonsense as he sees it. You know, why is she not grateful? Why am I not? Why am I not prime minister yet? I gave her the big...
He actually writes that, you know, if she doesn't want to give it back to me, I will wear it on speculation. Just give it to me. This is like Frodo and the Ring of Power or something. But also, I mean, just I think we've forgotten to mention the potted history of the Koh-i-Noor. was actually for the British created by a man who was not a historian. Can we talk about Theo Metcalf? This is exactly, this is the point at which. So when Dalhousie gets his hands on the Cohen North,
He wants to know, like everybody else, not only is there a curse, but what is the story of this gem? And as the... As he knows that the Koh-i-Noor was originally part of the Mughal treasury, I don't think he knows it was part of the Peacock's Row, but he knows that at some point the Mughals possessed it before Nader Shah took it. He writes to a young... East India Company Fisher was very interested in gems and he knows this guy because he's a friend of his father.
called Theo Metcalf. And Theo Metcalf is a slight wastrel. He's... He gets into trouble with women, with dogs and horses. He sounds perfect to write a detailed history. Perfect. Well, exactly. He's not necessarily your first choice. And it's he that then goes around the, because the Red Fort, the Mughal Empire is still going.
on very much its last legs. But until 1857, we're now in the 1840s, it's still there. And the Mughal Emperor is there and all his princes are there. So Theo is sent up to the Red Fort to interview. the treasurers of Chandichauk, the keepers of the Mughal Toshikana. and the various experts and gents, but also the princes and princesses about the stories of the Koh-i-Noor. And a lot of the legends of the Koh-i-Noor come from the document that he produces. There's one copy of it.
still surviving in the Indian National Archives, which I read when I was writing the first thing i i mean it was so exciting when you found the metcalf thing which is you know in nine parts garbage but it is the nine parts garbage is is what it's fascinating but it informs what's informed everything that's come And it informs the neurosis in the royal court of Can I Wear? Actually, it's a two-pronged thing because Queen Victoria is also acutely sensitive of the deposing of kings.
So, you know, she is not comfortable with the fact that the boy king, an 11-year-old child, who is actually of a similar age to Bertie, her oldest son. has been surrounded by enemies, separated from his mother. She's a mother at the end of the day as well. And has been, you know, treated in this way. And because she has such favorable reports of Dilip and is becoming quite obsessed with the idea of Dilip Singh.
This is all very uncomfortable. And that just winds Dalhousie up. No end. Anyway, look, she gets over it. She takes the diamond. And they start to think about how to use the diamond. And you're right, they have an opportunity. A year later, the Great Exhibition of 1851, the star attraction is going to be...
the Kohenor, the rock, literally the rock star of this exhibition. And you should set this in the context of how people think about empire in Britain at this point. If you go to what's now the Foreign Office, what used to be the Old Indoor Office, at the top of one of the... main staircases is a fresco done by an Italian artist in the 18th century. And it's called India gifting her riches to Great Britain. And you have an image of Britannia.
taking this sort of loot out of a, I think, is it a gold cauldron? I think so, yeah, something like that. And there are pearls, there are diamonds, and then she's pouring it. India, the figure of personification of India is pouring it into... the arms of Britannia. And without thinking it through very much, the British public very much bought into this idea that India is there to enrich. It's a gift from the heavens to enrich this country.
And the Great Exhibition is a version of this. It's to display the wealth of Britain. It's to display the reach of its empire, the extraordinary products that are being brought in all the way from the Hudson Bay Company down to Tasmania. But at the heart of it, at the centre of the exhibition, is the Koh-i-Noil. And this is the point, really, which the Koh-i-Noil enters the British public general.
view so it's an excellent build up and it's a brilliant and the hype and fury around it at the time in 1851 was was intense Does it shine? Well, no, really not so much. So it is placed, first of all. This is all Albert. We should say the great exhibition is Albert's brainchild. It is Albert's brainchild.
attempt to curry favour with the British people as well. And he puts it in an enormous greenhouse which is called the Crystal Palace. So the Crystal Palace. So look, the thing is about a Crystal Palace is that, and it's in Hyde Park, it's not where we think of Crystal Palace today. The Crystal Palace was this...
It's just filled with glass. It's filled with light. Now, a diamond, and can you just remind us again, we're talking about a diamond that is not a diamond as most people would know them to be cut today. So gem cutting technology has been... hugely advanced in Europe. And there's now very little problem at all about cutting this hardest of stones. But in India still, they love the old Mughal cut, which is basically leaving it more or less naive as it is.
taking it almost as it appears from the ground and maybe giving it a little bit of a rose cut, as it's called, a very simple faceting. But the Indians have no taste yet for what we have in Europe, which is called the brilliant cup, the sparkles. And the Koh-i-Noor doesn't sparkle. It's just an enormous rock. brilliant and extraordinary, but it's not symmetrical, it doesn't sparkle, and it's not what the Europeans want to see as their rock.
Already, in a sense, this has been anticipated by Logan, because when he used to show people the Kohinoor when he's in charge of the Toshikana... He used to make people look at the Koh-i-Noor through a peephole. Right. And he would get black velvet and get, I think, a very strong light coming from underneath an oil lamp. Underneath it, yes. An oil lamp under it, exactly right.
Diamonds were meant to do, but lost in the Crystal Palace. Albert doesn't think this through. He puts it on a very lavish cushion of velvet, rich purple velvet, we're told. And, you know, people come and they look at it. First of all, actually, what they do... is they go running off in the wrong direction. There's a big lump of core. as one of the exhibits, and they go, ooh, the koinor, and when they're told, no, that's not it, it's over there.
In comparison, the Koenor is really dull. It's small and it's boring. And not symmetrical. It's got this dome and this tail. Yes, the Arthur's seat analogy, which I've always loved. I think it's fabulous. Yes, the really expensive tadpole. So people go away and they're very rude about it. So Albert is not happy because this is, you know, this is his reputation is on the line. So first of all, they change out the colours around it. OK, if not purple, then dark crimson. That's not working.
So he starts to put mirrors around it, thinking, OK, that will reflect the light. That doesn't work. Then it's gas lamps and mirrors, and that doesn't work. Then he realises quite late in the day, and quite astonishingly late in the day, That it's natural light that is defeating all of these gas lamps. So he builds like a wooden shed type thing around it. But creating inadvertently Britain's first sauna. Exactly. You know, so people go in to have a look after all this tinkering. They go in.
to look at the coming up. Some of them are coming out, having passed out in here, you know. So again, that curse of the Koh-i-Noor, that, you know, looking at it as a dangerous thing, becomes embedded. expectations that are built up. There are queues across London. I think, is it a third of the country? A third of the country will file through those doors of the Crystal Palace. I mean, it's astonishing. That's just, even today, that's crazy. And to a man, they look at the diamond and they go,
Meh. Meh. It's all right. It's not what they've been led to believe. No. So, you know, at the end of the great exhibition in October 1851, the diamond is taken back to the tower in disgrace. But Albert's not going to leave it there. This has been a humiliation for him. So you know what? errant child like the errant child who's in India who has been recut and is being reformed into this British gentleman Dulip Singh Dulip Singh
This diamond too is going to be brought into line. So what Albert does is he goes around and he asks all of his experts. He says, look. can you cut it? And they all go, no, actually, no. He goes to David Brewster, the father of optics, a physicist in this country. He goes, can we cut it?
And he says, no, it's got a fault at its heart. If you try and cut it, this thing is going to disintegrate. Do not cut it. He's advised time and again, do not cut it. But, you know, there's that saying, he who pays the piper. So he starts casting about in Amsterdam, where the best diamond cutters are. And he finds Moses Kuster, who's a really renowned diamond cutter. And Moses Kuster says, what do you want to do?
How much are you paying? Sure, we'll be right over. And he sends his team, his crack team of diamond cutters to England to cut the Koh-i-Noor. And they set up a sort of stall in the Haymarket. It's a workshop. It's a little factory, you know. And it's what's really interesting. This is so, I mean, so interesting. The Kohenor is so famous.
Even while they're constructing this sort of shared workshop around it, where they're going to use state-of-the-art diamond cutting tools, things like a schaefer. It's called a schaefer. I think I'm saying it badly, but it's... a whirring round whetstone that upon which you grind out the facets of a diamond that's what they're going to use so they're assembling all of this and there are people sort of assembled outside as if you know it's like a hospital bed for an intensive care patient
But if that was exciting enough, wait till you're here. So who is going to do the first cut? They bring in a celebrity. I mean, not just a celebrity. The celebrity. And if you want to know who that is. You have to wait for the next segment. Come back after the break.
Hello, it's Steph McGovern and Robert Peston from The Rest Is Money here. Now it's absolute carnage at the minute on the stock market across the world, all thanks to Donald Trump and his tariffs. So this week... we've gone daily we're going to bring you shorter episodes every lunchtime just trying to make sense of it all because Robert I mean we've been in crises before haven't we
Yeah, I mean, I've been at the front line of reporting financial crisis for decades, from Black Monday in 1987, through the global financial crisis, through the COVID crisis. I mean, you know, the list goes on. This is a unique... crisis because it is driven by one man, Donald Trump, but it does share lots in common with those sagas we have lived through before.
And as we know, although what people see is falling share prices, it is to an extent what goes on in debt markets, financial markets, which is more important to our prosperity. And we are seeing absolute turmoil in bond markets. for example. So this is going to affect every part of our lives. Yes. And so we'll be looking at things like what do we think is going to happen next? How much pain is Trump willing to take?
And what similarities are there with things like the credit crunch that you and I covered together? So to try and make sense of all of us, join us on The Rest Is Money wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to Empire. So we finally got the Koh-i-Noor to England. It has been on in the Great Exhibition, but it has disgraced itself by not shining enough. So the... State-of-the-art diamond cutters have been summoned from Amsterdam. A workshop has been set up in the Haymarket.
and who, Anita, has been called to do the first cut. Wow, I feel like there should be a drumroll. Here, live from Fighting Napoleon, it is Old Nosy himself, the Iron Duke. It is no less than Wellington. Wellington who is on your five pound note He is, at this time, is he eight or 79 at this time? He's like a, he's an old man. He's very old. He's a very old man with, you know, the gnarled hands of a warrior, you know, sort of like ginger. His hands are sort of all...
twisted and old and the diamond cutters are a bit worried by this so they've covered up naturally they are so what they do is they think okay you know in case of a tremble this is not going to go well So they encase the whole thing in lead, apart from one facet that he is going to ceremoniously... grind out that first face which he then cuts and this is more or less the the duke's final act because he drops down dead
shortly afterwards he never gets to see the finished items again but can you tell us why why is it important it's important for the crowds who are outside Haymarket oh by the way it's a hilarious thing that he turns up ignores all the crowds he hates crowds hates people comes in does his grinding nothing and leaves but what what is it about wellington's past wellington's ties with india that makes this so such an important thing and he wants to do it
From what we understand, he asked to do it. Correct. So the Duke of Wellington made his name in India. And the Duke's very first command was against Tipu Sultan in 1799. He was responsible. for the security after the conquest of Sriranga Putnam, Tipu's capital. It's sometimes said in history books that he led the attack on Tipu. In fact, that's not true. There was a guy called Harris and another guy called David Baird.
And it's David Baird who famously discovers the body of Tipu and this famous, wonderful picture in the Scottish National Gallery of this event. But... Wellington has defeated the Marathas in 1803 in the Maratha War. And he famously says that they were much tougher adversaries than Napoleon. Is it the Battle of Versailles? Battle of Versailles, exactly. The battle in which the Duke lost the most of his soldiers. He won the battle, but it was almost a Pyrrhic victory.
Half his troops die in the battle. Anyway, he makes the cut. He then drops down dead, as anyone male associated with the Koh-i-Noor seems to do. But the cut itself is hugely controversial. Massively so. Because, you know, those people who were telling Prince Albert what he didn't want to hear, that you cannot cut this thing, don't cut it. It's got a flaw. It's got a flaw at its heart. It will go up. I mean, some have, you know, warned him that it's like, it's carbon at the end of the day.
it will go up in, you know, ash. Don't do it. And it's so irregular. And it's such a mess that they, I mean, you expect to lose a little bit of your diamond when you cut it. But in the case of the Coen Noir, I've got the figures in front of me. The cut practically halves the Koh-i-Noor. It goes from 190.3 metric carats to just 93 metric carats. I mean, that's, we just took to halve the mass of a great diamond. So it comes out of this cut.
you know, half the size he went in. I mean, it's not a success, but it does sparkle. Do you know who else is being diminished at the same time? Go back to Dulip Singh. Dulip Singh. So this is now 1842, 1852. So now for the last three years, remember, since 1849, since he signed over his kingdom and the diamond, Dulip Singh has been in the care of the Logans.
And he has been growing up like a good little boy and pleasing them all. And goodness knows the trauma that he's buried deep inside because he's not seen his mother. He doesn't have any friends. from his old life. He doesn't, you know, he's not the Maharaja anymore. They do this weird thing, the Logans, to try and keep him happy. They really are trying to keep him happy. But they...
They give him jewels from the Toshakana, which he then has to give back. You know, it's like, happy birthday, here are some jewels. But he doesn't get to keep them, he just gets to wear them to make him happy, because it's what would happen when he's the Maharaja.
So, tragedy upon tragedy. But, you know, he's thriving, they say. And he's corresponding with Queen Victoria. And this correspondence is becoming rather warm. It's very warm. Now, when he says, just before his 16th birthday, I would like to see the Maharani of the world. Queen Victoria is really enthusiastic. She says, oh, God, let him come. I can't. That's exciting. And all of her advisers.
including the Prime Minister at the time, say don't do it. Do not do this, because if you show this kind of favour, it goes to these heathen princes' heads. but she does she wants to meet him wants to meet him very much so he comes over in 1854 And immediately is embraced within the royal family. You know, like, this is a really controversial thing. Do you remember when we toured in India? And I would say this to an Indian crowd and they would sort of bridle. I think there was real love.
There, between these two. You know, she was enchanted by him, by his manners and his beauty more than anything. He was really very, very beautiful. By this stage is how old? 16, just before his 16th birthday. He turned 16 here in Britain. A beautiful young man. So, you know, just again, just worth almost sort of feline kind of features, you know, very fine featured. narrow face, narrow forehead, very sort of distinguished aquiline nose like his mother.
almond-shaped eyes, fringed with very thick eyelashes, beautiful deep brown eyes. You can tell why she was enchanted by him. He was a really pretty boy. But he gets taken to Osborne. And he is immediately in the inner sanctum. So they start playing, you know, they play games at Osborne. All the princes and princesses, they dress up and do their little plays.
And he ties turbans around the boys because he knows how to do it. And they wear Indian clothes and they eat Indian food. And if you've gone to Osborne, you can really see the stamp of India at Osborne House. Most touchingly, what he does... and she notices this and writes about it in her diary, Queen Victoria, that he never leaves out Leopold. So Bertie and the others, they're all a bit rough and tumble.
And little Leopold has haemophilia and is always left behind in all the games. But Dilip will always scoop him up and put him on his shoulders so he's not left behind. So she's struck by the enormous kindness. And they spend hours sketching each other. And if you go to Osborne as well, in the Royal Collection, there are these beautiful sketches that Victoria does of Dilip and Dilip does of Queen Victoria.
So, you know, obviously this is going to be a happily ever after story, isn't it? But it's the Koh-i-Noor. But it's the Koh-i-Noor. So for his birthday, the Queen has decided in July 1854... that she's going to have a portrait painted of him by Winterhalter, who we've spoken about before in this podcast, who's a great court artist, her favourite court artist. And it's going to be done in Buckingham Palace. And it's going to be done in the white drawing room. And Dilip is on a pedestal.
In all his finery, he is dripping with pearls and emeralds and jewels. And around his neck. Ironic in the sense that the British had taken them all from him. Well, but, you know, they lend them back for this picture. And he's got it. What is really, I think, significant about the Winterhalter, and if you can look it up, do look it up.
is he wears a little cameo of Queen Victoria around his throat and he will wear one near his heart and will do so for most of his life apart from this very turbulent period where he turns viciously against Queen Victoria. But this painting is being done. And during his posing of this painting, this charade, is played out because Queen Victoria, you know, the diamonds have been cut. I don't know if he even knows the diamond has been cut.
The one thing out of all the finery, all the jewels and stuff that is absent from his arm. you know, must have felt really light without it. is the Kohenor that as a little boy he had strapped to his arm. Yeah, that was exactly the painting. I mean, just describe what you see in case I haven't done it justice. It has Dulip Singh as a beautiful 16-year-old with...
the beginnings of a beard, because he is only 16, although he's tall and commanding. Well, actually, you know, he cheated that he was actually short. But Winterhalter cheats the perspective to make him look taller. That's, that's, yeah. Yeah. He's wearing, around his neck, about ten strings of pearls, which tumble down onto his chest.
There is this little cameo of Queen Victoria in the middle of all these pearls. He's got a turban on, the turban is dripping with jewels too, and there's a fantastic salpache, that's a turban ornament. And he's in sort of cloth of gold, the whole... outfit is sort of fantastically gilt from sort of shining gilt juridahs or pajama bottoms, golden slippers with turned up ends. He has a wonderful Sikh scimitar in his hand.
And it is quite simply one of the great portraits of not only the Victorian period, but one of the greatest portraits. to come out of the British encounter with India. Agreed. And it's also the fantasy of India. There's the embodiment of what India is. It is exotic and beautiful.
and dangerous, you know, the presence of the cemetery. I think that all of these things all pictures at that time it's all laden with meaning so anyway it's both you know it's interesting because you know yes it's orientalist and that they you know they've done him up as he would be in court in in court the court that they abolish
And they've covered him with jewels, the jewels that they took from him. And they make him look like a prince when he's lost his kingdom. Yeah, he has the title. He retains Maharaja, but that's it. So anyway, during this time, Queen Victoria's been really, really nervous because the diamond's been cut, but she hasn't yet worn it in public because she's really fond of Dilip. I mean, like spectacularly fond of Dilip. So she doesn't want to hurt him. She wants to know how he'll react.
if she does wear the diamond. So she quietly, on the never-never, asks Lady Logan, how do you think he'll react? And Lady Logan, who writes a brilliant memoir, which is a fabulous account of the time. lady logan's recollections she says you know i actually didn't tell the queen the truth i said oh i'm not sure how he'll react whereas i knew there was no one subject that obsessed the maharaja more
So the Queen tells Lady Logan, take him riding before we do the portrait and ask him. And Lady Logan does this. She says, you know, if you did see the Koh-i-Noor, would that be all right? And Dilip is quiet and gives a quite enigmatic reply. But it's not fury and it's not tears and it's not rage. So she reports back saying, I think it'll be OK.
And then, so cut forward again to this portrait by Winterharter being painted of this beautiful boy on a pedestal. He's standing in the white drawing room. Yeah, on a pedestal. And suddenly a frock-coated man comes to the door, bangs on the door, comes in with a casket in his hand. And Queen Victoria goes over and opens the casket and goes, Oh, Dilip! Dilip, would you like to come and have a look?
at something you might be interested so he steps down off the dice he has no idea what's kind of and we know this accurately from lady logan who was there in the room when it happened And he walks over and she holds out the corner and she says, breezily, it's much changed since you last saw it. You know, half the size. And he looks at it and... Lena Logan describes how his face goes through an entire year of seasons as he looks at it. And everybody, like, no one can breathe. So it's...
Queen Victoria then drops it in his hand. And Lino Logan's really nervous, like, what's he going to do? Because this may be too much for him. And he takes the diamond over to the open window of the white drawing room. And holds it up to the light. And Lena Logan says, you know, she can't breathe because what's he going to, is he going to throw it out the window? He might, you know.
And after what seems like an age, he comes back to Queen Victoria and says, it is to me, ma'am, a great pleasure to present to you the Koh-i-Noor. As if he has the power, as if he has the right. to do anything else but it's all she needs to hear because from the moment he does that she then wears it in public.
at state occasions. It will actually, in fact, after Albert dies and she puts all her other baubles away, be the one diamond she still wears with her black and Honiton lace. But that is the moment when she thinks it's okay to wear it. And she has a special fitting made for it. We've seen, yes, we've found the receipts from Garrard's. You know, they make this wonderful brooch setting with a really clever clip that you can pop it out and then put it in a crown as well.
So it could be both a brooch and a standalone object of its own. And standalone and also be placed. in a crown but after her death it's never worn again by any other monarch no it is it has not been worn by a monarch but it has been worn by the Queen Consort ever since.
So again, you know, it's, maybe they're not so important and if they die, hideous death. I don't know. I'm not saying that, but I'm saying, you know. The story which I think is either Manchester Elphinstone or Richard Burton sends to the Queen. which is only one version of the many myths, which there are, is that the curse only affects.
A man. A man. Yeah, that's it. And this is the version that's accepted by Queen Victoria. So whether or not the curse exists, whether or not there's any truth in it, whether or not whatever the curse is. This is the one that the royal family come to recognise as the truth. I'm just going to say one little thing, because again, it's a whole other podcast, maybe, about Dilip Singh's life from that moment when he plops the stone.
But just suffice to say, he may well be yet another victim of the Coen or curse, if you believe in such names. Tell us the story, because it's an extraordinary story. So this is the boy that was... Born in Lahore, the one survivor of this bloodbath in the Lahore bar. He's taken on Christianity. He's become an intimate to Queen Victoria. He has given...
as far as he can, the throne to his new sovereign. He's very much the blue-eyed boy or suddenly the brown-eyed boy. For a long time, he remains a favourite of the court.
He becomes very much embittered against Queen Victoria because he suddenly, at a later point in midlife, starts to believe that he was cheated that how that it is illegal in fact what they did to him as a minor to take him away from his mother and make him sign a contract it is now not a contract because he was a minor when he signed it
So he starts to challenge that to the point where he says he's going to get India back and he becomes an implacable enemy of the British state. He refers to Queen Victoria as Mrs. Fagin, the receiver of stolen goods. He has this idea that he will sail back to India and do a deal with the Tsar because the great game is afoot.
And they will together pincer the British out of the north of India, that his Sikhs will rise up on his behalf and the Russians will push over and together they will squeeze out the British. He doesn't get further than the port of Aden. He is not allowed to go through the Suez Canal. He is arrested with his very young family. His children are arrested. And he then becomes this sort of exile in Europe.
where he tries, you know, he's scrabbling around for money. He is broke. He's had to sell his wonderful haul at Elverdon. I mean, he sells all that thinking he's going to, you know, use the money to get back to India. He fritters it away because he is a... A gambler and, you know, carouser. He dumps his wife and family, which is another story. But everything he does is failed from that point on because British agents are on him.
flies so everything he does his money is pickpocketed his papers are denied the czar won't meet him and he ends up dying alone and broke in a Parisian hotel It's the most tragic story. It's just, it's unbelievable, you know. So, shall we now talk about the role of the Kohenor in the present day, William? Because it's... It may be a stone of antiquity, but it really is still this diplomatic grenade, isn't it? I mean, it's a live issue and things have changed and moved on since we wrote the book.
That's absolutely right. When we wrote the book, the Kohen Noor had just been placed on the... of the Queen Mother and people were queuing to see her to pay their final respects and there was the Koh-i-Noor glinting in Westminster Hall. But no one knew what was going to happen in the future and now we do because... King Charles III is now... on the throne and
that Camilla is his queen consort and that crown will be worn at the coronation. Yeah, and they've said nothing to disabuse the world of this notion that the Kona will still be in the queen consort's crown. I mean, often it is not unusual.
or unheard of for crowns to be sort of reconfigured or gems to be prized out and repositioned for every queen who takes over they have different tastes they have different desires so that has happened in the past but nobody has given anyone an inkling that this is off to garrards to be refashioned so as things stand it will still be there and the result in india um william what do you think i mean you're somebody who spends more time in india than i do
So when the Queen died, every single Indian newspaper, every news channel, every documentary in India did something on the Kohi Noor. And there is widespread expectation, I think, in India. that it will come back. Meanwhile, no one in Britain even realizes that it's an issue. There's simply been no coverage of it, no understanding that this is a major issue. And I think what it shows, above all, is that this diamond...
which throughout its entire history has created division, bloodshed, misunderstanding, has lost none of its power. It's doing it perhaps more than ever on a continental scale. Yeah, yeah. And particularly, you know, when you've got somebody who is running India at the moment for whom this will be a coup if he can get the diamond to come back. This is a man who wants to right the wrongs, he says, of colonialism. He renames things in India so that they divest themselves of the colonial past.
What an impetus for him to put diplomatic and political pressure on Britain to get it back. But I don't think the British establishment is aware of this. And as far as the government is concerned, they're longing for good relations with India and hoping for better trade with India and so on. And at some point, I think, you know, the penny will have to drop. There are things that India wants back from Britain. You said penny, but...
The diamond will make a bigger thunk than that. Anyway, wherever it drops, we'll be dropping at the same time next week with another episode of Empire. So that's goodbye from me, Anita Arnand. And goodbye from me. You do so well. Honestly.