A scarce volume of intelligence on Western Turkey, prepared by the Admiralty during the First World War. Compiled by the Naval Staff Intelligence Department it includes an impressive range of information on everything from social life to agriculture. Much of the intelligence was gleaned from the official printed matter of other nations, as evidenced in the cartography consulted: “The maps used have been chiefly those of the General Staff of the War Office 1:250,000, the Austrian Staff Maps 1:200,000, the official Turkish Survey 1:210,000, the old Bulgarian Survey 1:126,000, and the revised Bulgarian Survey, 1:210,000.” (p.5).
An official publication, it was issued for a limited readership: “For Official Use only. Attention is called to the penalties attaching to any infraction of the Official Secrets Act.” Most surviving copies show signs of such ownership (often with sporadic manuscript annotations updating the content), but this example is remarkably clean and clearly saw no wartime use.
Scarce. LibraryHub locates five examples in the UK, at the University of Birmingham, BL, KCL, Oxford and UCL. OCLC adds no further examples, with no holding libraries in North America.
Provenance: 1). St John Armitage (1924-2004), soldier and diplomat; small bookseller’s pencil notes to … and …, stating that the book was from his library. St John’s storied career included service in the Arab Legion, seven years as a Commander with the Salala Field Force and a spell as the British Consul General at Dubai. 2). Geoffrey Turner (1941-2018), scholar specialising in Neo-Assyrian architecture; his attractive bookplate, a memento mori with skull and flowers, to front pastedown. Turner was recognised as one of the foremost authorities on his subject, contributing several important books and articles, including his final monumental study, The British Museum’s Excavations at Nineveh, 1846-1855 (Brill, 2020). He was also a lifelong collector, with an extensive library focused on the history and culture of the Middle East.
