Pilgrimage of Passion

Book excerpt: Wilfred Scawen Blunt, 1840-1922, was one of England's true eccentrics: a wildly individual, larger-than-life personality who was as admired as he was disliked. A writer, poet, rebel, politician and explorer, his controversial life was in every sense a 'pilgrimage of passion'. He campaigned tirelessly for the independence of Egypt, India and Ireland (for which he was imprisoned) and, before marrying Byron's granddaughter, he travelled widely as a diplomat embarking on passionate love affairs and upsetting the Establishment - whether the British Empire or conventional morality. George Wyndham, Lord Curzon and Oscar Wilde were just some of the figures who attended Blunt's famous literary Crabbet Club and young Arabists like T.E. Lawrence and St John Philby regarded him as a prophet. During his lifetime, and for many years after, no anthology was complete without his poems. Based on Wilfrid Blunt's complete diaries and papers, Elizabeth Longford has produced a riveting biography of this most compelling man.