The Collector's Daughter Read online

  My fictional representation of Eve’s confusion and recovery after two strokes in 1972 and 1973 is based on information from a physiotherapist who worked in stroke rehabilitation in that era. I have no inside information about what health problems Eve suffered after her car accident and subsequent strokes, but snippets in the society and court pages of The Times show her enjoying a full social life around parliament and the racing circuit in the late 1930s, and she described dining with Brograve at the Savoy during an air raid in World War II. At the opening of the British Museum exhibition in 1972 she gave a lucid interview to The Times, although she looks frail in the photographs taken that day.

  I have supported the Stroke Association since my mother died too young of a hemorrhagic stroke back in 2004, and I take a keen interest in the brilliant progress scientists and doctors are making in stroke treatment and prevention.

  When my aunt Anne had a stroke that affected her speech in 2013, she picked up a laminated sheet left at her bedside by one of the medical staff and practiced reading it out loud, utterly determined to learn to speak again. She was ninety years old. I couldn’t resist giving that story to Eve.

  Memory is a theme running throughout the novel, but at the core it is a love story between Eve and Brograve, and it asks the question: Can you still love someone when they no longer remember your shared past and may have an altered personality because of changes that have occurred in their brain? The answer, based on my own experience, is that you love them more than ever. I am sure that was true of Eve and Brograve.

  Further Reading

  BOOKS

  * * *

  Carnarvon, Countess of, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey, 2011.

  Carnarvon, Countess of, Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey, 2013.

  Carnarvon, Earl of, No Regrets, 1976.

  Cross, William, Carnarvon, Carter and Tutankhamun Revisited, 2016.

  Cross, William, The Life and Secrets of Almina Carnarvon, 2011.

  Hawass, Zahi, Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb, 2018.

  Highclere Castle: The Home of the 8th Earl and Countess of Carnarvon, 2013.

  Horn, Pamela, Country House Society: The Private Lives of England’s Upper Classes after the First World War, 2015.

  Hoving, Thomas, Tutankhamun: The Untold Story, 2002.

  James, T.G.H., Howard Carter: The Path to Tutankhamun, 2001.

  Miller, Russell, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle, 2009.

  Reeves, Nicholas, The Complete Tutankhamun, 1990.

  Vannini, Sandro, King Tut: The Journey Through the Underworld, 2018.

  Winstone, H.V., Howard Carter and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun, 2008.

  USEFUL ARTICLES AND BLOGS

  * * *

  Cross, William, http://evelyn-herbert.blogspot.com.

  Frankel, Claire, “Stately Home with a Trove from Egypt,” The New York Times, August 21, 1988.

  Paddock, Stan, “Driving a Model T,” https://web.archive.org/web/20130320044010/http://www.scvmtfc.org/drivingmodelt.pdf.

  “The Day We Found the Treasures,” The Times, March 29, 1972.

  “The Romance a Pharaoh’s Curse Couldn’t Stop,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 9, 1923.

  Tyldesley, Joyce, “Tutankhamun: Who’s Afraid of the Pharaoh’s Curse,” History Extra.

  Howard Carter’s papers and drawings can be viewed online at the Griffith Institute at Oxford University. This site also has eyewitness accounts of the opening of the tomb by Sir Alan Gardiner and Arthur Mace, the diary of Minnie Burton and her husband Harry’s photographs, plus many other items, all available online at www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/discoveringTut.

  Reading Group Guide

  Would you be brave enough to be the first person to crawl into a three-thousand-year-old tomb through a hole chipped in a sealed doorway in the middle of the Egyptian desert?

  The author wrote seven different beginnings for this novel: Maya overseeing the arrangement of Tutankhamun’s tomb; Eve as a young girl meeting Howard Carter for the first time; Porchy and Eve spying on one of their father’s séances; Eve traveling to Egypt for the first time; the crash in 1935; Eve attending the British Museum exhibition in 1972 and meeting Ana Mansour there; and the current one. How would it have affected the story if she had used one of the others instead?

  What do you make of the allegations that Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter were gay? If true, can you imagine how hard that must have been in an era when it was illegal?

  Almina was a complex character whose life might have been quite different had she not been illegitimate. Yet she achieved a lot for a woman in that era. How did you feel about Almina in the novel?

  Eve led a very sheltered childhood, and as she said to Brograve when they met, she was still trying to find out what kind of person she was. Did you see her character change through the different time periods the novel covers? What characteristics did she retain even after her strokes?

  What’s your view about the issue of who owns artifacts found in foreign lands? Do you think Ana Mansour was justified in the methods she used to try to reclaim them?

  Do you believe spirits can contact us from the afterlife? Do you think the tomb might have been cursed?

  Brograve and Eve had very different personalities. Do you think he was the right husband for her?

  Have any of your loved ones experienced memory loss or personality changes after a head injury or stroke? Were you convinced by the way Eve recalled some events from the past and not others, and the moments of lucidity she sometimes experienced? Did this concur with your experiences?

  Have you watched Downton Abbey? Can you imagine what it must have been like to grow up in a stately home like Highclere Castle? How do you think it would affect you as an adult?

  Photographs

  Lady Evelyn Herbert, 1923. This photo was taken not long after her father’s death.

  Unknown author, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

  Inside the antechamber of Tutankhamun’s tomb.

  Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

  Brograve and Eve on their wedding day, with a huge height difference despite her heels!

  © Illustrated London News/Mary Evans Picture Library

  Praise for The Collector’s Daughter

  “Gill Paul weaves an intriguing tale about a historical mystery we know and a woman we don’t. . . . Wonderfully compelling from beginning to end, The Collector’s Daughter will mesmerize its readers as much as the lure of ancient treasures mesmerized these famous Egyptologists. An absolute delight!”

  —Hazel Gaynor, New York Times bestselling author of When We Were Young & Brave

  “This is a compelling story, impeccably researched, with a delicious sense of time and place that brings the historical characters to vivid life. . . . It deals with the big questions too: What is true? Memory versus history, and how we block out the past. I loved that.”

  —Dinah Jefferies, author of The Tea Planter’s Wife

  “Riveting, emotional, and completely fabulous. Lady Eve’s fascinating and poignant story held me spellbound. Gill Paul has done it again!”

  —Tracy Rees, author of The House at Silvermoor

  “From the very first chapter of The Collector’s Daughter, Gill Paul draws you into the exotic worlds of Lady Evelyn Herbert, the first person to enter Tutankhamun’s tomb, and the alarming reverberations of those early adventures through the rest of her life. I didn’t want it to end.”

  —Liz Trenow, author of Under a Wartime Sky

  “A beautiful and evocative retelling of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun. . . . Gill Paul’s sensual exploration of this famous event travels across five decades, asking whether the tragedies that followed were due to curse or coincidence, and giving fresh life to this most beguiling corner of history. Unputdownable!”

  —Sarah Steele, author of The Missing Pieces of Nancy Moon

  Also by Gill Paul

/>   Jackie and Maria

  The Lost Daughter

  Women and Children First

  The Affair

  No Place for a Lady

  The Secret Wife

  Another Woman’s Husband

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  P.S.TM is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

  THE COLLECTOR’S DAUGHTER. Copyright © 2021 by Gill Paul. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Cover photographs © Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images (woman); © Lee Avison/Arcangel Images (face); © Zoonar GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo (castle); © Getty Images

  Title page and chapter opener image in chapters 40, 41, and 42 © Alice-D / Shutterstock, Inc.

  Chapter opener image in chapters 3, 19, 22, 24, 25, 30, and 31 © Marcelo Alex / Shutterstock, Inc.

  Chapter opener image in chapters 32 and 34 © Em7 / Shutterstock, Inc.

  Chapter opener image in chapter 48 © Nadina / Shutterstock, Inc.

  All other chapter opener images © Claudio Divizia / Shutterstock, Inc.

  FIRST EDITION

  Digital Edition SEPTEMBER 2021 ISBN: 978-0-06-307987-8

  Version 07192021

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-307986-1

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