Twenty years in the near East

Autobiography of a British consul at Constantinople, Damascus, Cairo, and other postings in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Hulme-Beaman discusses the difficulties faced in his career--international tensions, legal troubles, extralegal executions, cultural misunderstandings, disease outbreaks, etc.--as well as friendly episodes with the people he lived and worked with. His topics range from class conflict in Serbia, to bear hunting, warfare in Crete, publishing his own newspaper (the Times of Egypt), English foreign policy, and trout fishing.