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Laurence Oliphant: oddest of Victorian oddballs

Bart Casey brilliantly resurrects this adventurer, diplomat, mystic and spy who impressed Queen Victoria with his ability to commune with fairies

12 March 2016

9:00 AM

12 March 2016

9:00 AM

The Double Life of Laurence Oliphant: Victorian Pilgrim and Prophet Bart Casey

Post Hill Press, pp.200, £17.99, ISBN: 9781618687968

As an erstwhile obituarist, I pity the poor hack who had to write up the life of Laurence Oliphant — adventurer, diplomat, war correspondent, mystic, spy (and the subject of Bart Casey’s biography) — when he died, aged 59, in 1888. The first paragraph should (according to the well-seasoned formula) contain some characterising incident or achievement, giving the measure of the man, the impact he made on the world and those around him, and an indication of his interior life.

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