In the tradition of travel accounts such as Richard Halliburton's The Royal Road to Romance (1925), Aldous Huxley's Along the Road (1925) and Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana (1937), Americans tended to prefer Europe, particularly France and Spain whereas the British went eastward: ‘The places between the wars the British traveler took as his province: Kashmir, Japan, China, Egypt, Northern India, Palestina, Constantinople, the Bay of Naples, Sicily, Ceylon’(1).

When Paul Fussell studies British travellers in his Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars (1980) he suggests that travelling was a bourgeois obsession or cult in the first half of the twentieth century among the younger generation, especially Oxbridge graduates:

Curiously, the obsession seemed to grip Oxford prominently. Cambridge can boast a few devotees of abroad, mostly homosexuals like Forster, Ackerley, and Iserwood, but it is Oxford that produced the bulk of between-the-wars literary travelers. Balliol is responsible for Greene, Patrick Balfour, Aldous Huxley, Peter Quennell, and Connolly,..Magdelen produced Alan Pryce-Jones; Christ Church, David Talbot, Rice, Sykes, Fleming, and Auden; Hertford, Evelyn Waugh; and Merton, Robert Byron (Abroad, 76).

Apart from 'the national snobbery engendered by two centuries of wildly successful imperialism' (Abroad, 74), one significant motive for the common desire among western writers to travel abroad seems to be the quest for adventure, a motive which is usually inspired by the earlier adventurous fictions and accounts set in particular locations of the world such as Turkey. Deeply influenced by his childhood excitement over the witch Gagool in Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines (1886), his favourite book, Graham Greene, speaking on behalf of his fellow travellers such as Fleming, Waugh and himself, remarks that: 'We were a generation bought up on adventure stories who had missed the enormous disillusionment of the first war; so we went looking for adventure' (Abroad, 70).

According to Fussell the search for the unusual and exotic appears to be another motive for travel. Various travellers who were fascinated by the vision of the East generated in Western minds during the Age of Imperialism(2) were preoccupied by the quest for eccentricity and anomalies, which modern times have termed 'tourist attractions'. It was believed that:

A travel book, at its purest, is addressed to those who do not plan to follow the traveller at all, but who require the exotic or comic anomalies, wonders, and scandals of the literary form 'romance' which their own place or time cannot entirely supply (Abroad, 203).

And between Tahiti and Istanbul, the pretty island and the fabled city which are two of the exotic frontiers, there is a middle zone that combines palm trees and riches, the exotic of India and China - nautch girls, howdahs, the pink palace, the court, and the sahib’s pipe-dream of himself in stately repose. The frontiers are actual (Seamonsters, 147)
Although he takes into consideration the significant role of the earlier travel accounts, no matter whether they are based on fictional or actual travels or their use of the exotic, Theroux argues that ‘the exotic image is not implicitly erotic but often subtly sensual,.. and it goes almost without saying that the exotic notion is a Western dream, a hankering for the East’ (Seamonsters, 147). Since, however, most reflections of the exotic as a traditional romantic element in texts set either within the Oriental context in general or a Turkish one in particular, usually appear to be inspired by previous works, (especially nineteenth-century tales as we have already discussed) it is necessary to go back to the previous century’s use of the term in relation to eroticism.

In his textual analysis of diverse nineteenth-century English and French travel accounts about the Orient, John Dixon seems almost to identify exoticism with eroticism, in that the legitimisation of the illicit pleasure for eroticism is camouflaged as a taste for the exotic, largely expressed through fictitious tales of the Victorian male imagination: ’The travel writers know they were able to play into the readers’ fantasies of the East in which the exotic and erotic were in close proximity’(4). In another part of his thesis Dixon takes this proximity of the terms into the twentieth century with some nuances:

The close proximity of the terms exotic/erotic had a real basis in the early nineteenth-century of harems and slave markets,...The individual imagination was always in excess of the capacity of reality to satisfy erotic desires, but by the twentieth century the symbolism of Oriental sensuality had been reduced to the tourist bibelot (Representations of the East, 62-3).

Although the end of the Ottoman Empire was signalled definitively by the proclamation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 it is still commonplace in twentieth-century travel accounts, particularly those written about Istanbul, to stumble upon so called romantic reminiscences from the past, such as exotic stories of the harem, eunuchs and concubines, and an emphasis on Turkish interest in sexual perversions such as sodomy, a dominant image of the cinema with special reference to Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Midnight Express (1978).

It can be said that The Towers of Trebizond with its diverse oddities, ironies and miscellaneous themes is the outcome of a skilful combination of the setting, since Trebizond and the history of Turkey have certain qualities the author needed for her novel, and the creative employment of different images by her intellectual and personal experience:
Rose Macaulay triumphantly justifies the choice of her key-image...by the tightness of her intellectual control over its every detail and by her courage and delicacy in handling every personal material drawn from the experience, years long, of happiness and fun, coupled with guilt and the bitter loss, for many years, of peace of mind(5).

The account of the journey starts with three English figures; the narrator, Laurie, an English girl under forty who is an artist and has been in love with her married cousin for ten years; her aunt Dot, a religious widow in her sixties, who gallops incessantly around the world on a white racing camel and fights for the rights of women; and Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg, a retired Anglican divine given to saying long graces in either Latin or Greek. Arriving in Istanbul they are joined by a Turkish woman, Dr. Halide Tanpinar, who had studied medicine in London and joined the Anglican Church. They set out on a missionary venture to the Black Sea, particularly to Trebizond, during which Aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg vanish illegally into Russia to see what they can see. Then the focus shifts to the narrator as she wanders off on a camel by herself and grows steadily sadder until her lover is killed in an automobile accident at which point the book simply ends.

Although it is rare in comparison with other travel accounts, the recreation of nineteenth-century images of romance also occurs in association with Turkey in The Towers of Trebizond. While Laurie and Dr. Halide discuss the speculations of the reporters about the mysterious disappearance of Aunt Dot and Father Chantry-Pigg they agree that these stories may also be embellished with some elements of romance in an oriental context. Criticising the exaggeration of the reporters, Dr. Halide comments:

'Yes, and you would read it in the papers, with names. Romance! All they mean by romance in some commonplace tale of love. What do they know of the romance of the deserts and the mountains and the sea, the great Turkey cities buried in sand that we dig out piece by piece, the roaming of nations across wild lands to build grand civilisations'(6).

'And palaces', I added, for romance excites me, 'and harems and eunuchs and fountains playing in the courts, and peacocks spreading their tails in the sun, and paved roads running down to the port where the ships go in and out with purple sails, laden with cargoes of nuts and Circassian slaves, and camel caravans coming up from Arabia, jingling their bells through Petra and Palmyra and Baalbek, heading for Byzantium and the Bosphorus (Towers, 210-11).

'Yes, yes,' Halide broke in, 'but we cannot now tell all the tale of Romance, it is too long. We are agreed, you and I and Dot, and all our friends, what is Romance. But these newspaper gossips, they do not understand all that, they do not read poetry or look at beauty, they only know love (Towers, 211).

“What is this thing?” he asked Molly, as the Mercedes parked itself on the fringes of the gardens that surround the Seraglio. He stared dully at the barogue conglomeration of styles that was Topkapi. It was sort of a private whorehouse for the ‘King’, she said, getting out stretching. ‘Kept a lotta women there.’ Now it is a museum(7).

Despite the fact that polygamy was officially abolished in Turkey after the establishment of the Republic by the Turkish Civil Code(8), some travellers, such as Frederic Prokosch, seem to be keen on harem fantasies. When he first meets Mr. Suleiman in Istanbul in The Asiatics, the latter is ironically depicted as having had a close connection with the sultan's harem before:

We drove through the sad neglected streets of the decaying city, on along the shore and out into the open country. Mr. Suleiman told me all about himself as we rode. He was surprisingly intimate. "Mrs. Suleiman," he asserted in a high, whispering voice, "was once in the sultan's harem. That was when she was young and beautiful." I turned back involuntarily and glanced at Mrs. Suleiman. She was quite fat and there was a bit of moustache on her upper lip. She stared back at me without expression. “She was very beautiful then,” Mr. Suleiman continued. “Eyes like coals, a body graceful and limber like a gazelle. She is growing a little heavy now from eating too many biscuits and too much honey. But she was beautiful once, and I loved her with great devotion”(9).

The last word surprised me a little. But then I glanced at him again and it seemed the most natural  possible word. “Where did you first know her?" I asked innocently. "I was a guardian in the harem", he replied. “I saw her everyday. I loved her and she loved me. So after the end of the Empire we married. We have been very happy” (The Asiatics, 40-1)

He lit a cigarette and blew three fine smoke rings. “We have travelled much,” he went on. “To Paris, Vienna, Budapest, Sicily. Also Cairo and Alexandria. Mrs. Suleiman has enjoyed it. It has made her modern.” "But times changed," he continued sadly. "We are free, yes. But we regret the old days. Both of us feel homesick for the days of the sultan and the harem. They were full of leisure, we could relax. We could have all that we requested. But now everything is so uncertain and troublesome. I have much money but still I fell uncertain and troubled with life. These are such restless years!” (The Asiatics, 41).

Miasme had missed being the ‘Valide’ by inches. The Sultan Valide, or the mother of the sultan, used to be the most important person in the whole great Turkish Empire, but jealousy and ambition for the position ran so high in the harem that any woman who did finally become the Valide earned all honour that was due to her for sheer tenacity of purpose. She would, of necessity, have to be a woman beautiful, mobile and deductive, ruthless, cunning, single of purpose and satanically clever. Miasme had simply not made the grade. When the imperial harem was finally dissolved, she had emerged into the modern world with a few jewels and a yellow, hairless, dead-eyed eunuch as her only prize(10).

‘Spying’s the natural business of a Eunuch. In the big harems there were scores of bonnie lassies wi’ only one husband between the lot of them and no natural ootlet fer their passions. At times they’d go fair mad fer the lack of a man, so every harem was riddled wi’ plots to smuggle in some lusty young hamal or soldier fer an hour. ‘T was the job of the Eunuchs to match their cunning against that of the women, and the clever ones made mint o’ money at the game. Think of the opportunities for blackmail in sich a poseetion, mon! When one of these onnotural creatures had nosed out a love affair, he’d play the woman like a salmon trout by threatening to tell the master if she did not find him sil’er enough to still his tongue, or if she were rich, he’d encourage her to play the whore provided he made a guid thing oot of it. But all the time he’d have to go canny as a cat, fer if the woman were caught at her tricks he’d be called on to answer fer it, and if his brother Eunuchs found him out, they’d tell on him to curry favour with their boss, so he stood, so he stood a double chance of having his fat neck wrung. Can ye tell me a better school than that for a secret-service man?’(11)

In the Topkapi harem I was shown the quarters of the black eunuchs. Outside each cell were various instruments of torture, thumbscrews, lashes, and so forth. But punishments, according to the guide, were not always elaborate. I pressed her for an example. ‘They hang them up and beat them on their feet, 'she said(12).

I expected to be brought Turkish coffee, and to be wrapped in thick, warm Turkish towels. Instead I was shoved into a cold, dirty cubicle, given a thin towel, and told to undress. The attendant pointed to a door with her cigarette. At one of the basins an enormously fat naked old woman, with arms of iron, was sitting washing her underwear. She was the attendant, a eunuch figure, pendulous and mighty. They are an ancient guild, those masseuses, and for the first time I had a sense that I was in a room that might have been like the reality instead of the romance of the harem (Turkish Reflections, 48).

Eric Newby seems to be another typical example who treats similar anomalies mainly associated with the harem, Seraglio, Turkish baths, kiosks, etc. with detailed descriptions in separate chapters of On The Shores of the Mediterranean (1984) such as “Baths and Bazaars” and “The Harem at Topkapi”. Besides visiting all those exotic places in Istanbul and introducing their attraction among the westerners he initially focuses on the cultural significance of the traditional Turkish bath with reference to personal observations of the Reverend Robert Walsh, chaplain to the British Embassy at the Sublime Porte:

At the time when he was writing, and long after it, marriage contracts included a provision that the husband had to give his wife bath-money. If he failed to do so, all she had to do was to go before a cadi, a muslim judge, and turn her slipper upside down. If the husband still failed to produced the necessary admittance money, it was a ground for divorce(14).

According to her, the ladies’ baths visited by Wanda, and indefatigable investigator (four baths in three days and a rigorous inspection of the rest), were much more jolly than the gentlemen’s, a female version of White’s Club without the booze, as opposed to the ones I bathed in, which were more like the Athenaeum without the bishops. Everyone was kind to her, both attendants and bathing ladies being fascinated by her pallor, taking her for a Circassian slave escaped from a harem. There was a lot of singing and laughter and scurrilous gossip in the women’s baths and in all of them small children raced around naked like miniature streakers. Everyone else wrote briefs - should take a pain with them - but there seemed to be far less pudeur than in the men’s department; and in one bath she was massaged by a lady with wildly swinging bosoms, but much less violently than I was by her male counterparts. She gave her masseuse 700 TL for the whole treatment which included the tip, and as the masseuse constituted the entire staff she was delighted (On The Shores, 195-6).

What is a harem? What is a seraglio? The best description, the easiest to assimilate, is that written by N.M. Penzes, the author of The Harem, published in 1936, of which what follows is a precis. ‘Harem’ is derived from the Arabic haram, ‘that which is unlawful’., as opposed to ‘halal’, ‘that which is lawful’. The correct word in Turkish for the women’s part of the house is ‘haremlik’, harem strictly being the occupants. The part of the house where guests are received is the ‘selamlik’, but this never shortened, as selam alone simply means ‘salutation’ or greeting. Relations with European powers gave rise to the coining of a word that would embrace not only the ‘haremlik’ and the ‘selamlik’ but the royal palace as a whole, which became known as the Grand serail or Seraglio, seraglio being derived from the Italian ‘serraglio’, ‘a cage for wild animals’, and was adopted owing to its chance similarity with the Persian words ‘sara’ and ‘sarai’, ‘a building’ and particularly ‘a palace’; and this name for it was accepted both by Europeans and Turks (On The Shores, 207).

There, in the presence of a Turkish Commission, they were taken into a long hall filled with the ex-Sultan’s concubines, candines and odalisques, all of whom were then allowed to unveil themselves for the occasion. The scene that followed was very touching...The contrast between the delicate complexions and costly attire of the women and the rough, weather-beaten appearance of the ill-clad mountaineers who had come to fetch them home was not the least striking feature of the extraordinary scene... The number of female slaves thus liberated was two hundred and thirteen... Clad in Circassian peasant dress, they are now in all probability milking cows and doing farm work in Anatolia (On The Shores, 222).

Even cucumbers and other vegetables of inflammatory shape and size were cut into slices before being allowed in, for fear of misuse. In this harem nothing was left to chance; and it is therefore not surprising that those odalisques who were not occupying the sultan’s bed, and might never do so, sometimes took an interest in one another (On The Shores, 212)

Two Coptic Christian monks had what amounted to a monopoly of this business, castrating about a hundred and fifty young Negro boys a year, after which, as a post-operative treatment, they buried them up to their haunches in warm manure. No wonder the Black Eunuchs were cruel, arrogant, jealous and petulant. At least the White Eunuchs, who administered the harem in its early years before being supplanted by the Black Eunuchs, were asked if they wished the operation to be performed before submitting to it (On The Shores, 212).

As Murat [Ibrahim's brother, Murad IV] was wholly addicted to wine so was Ibrahim to lust. They say he spent all his time in sensual pleasure and when nature was exhausted with the frequent repetition of venereal delights he endeavoured to restore it with potions or commanded a beautiful virgin richly habited to be brought to him by his mother [Kosem, the Sultan Valide, who was eventually murdered in the harem], the Grand Vezir, or some other great man (On The Shores, 216).

When Ali set eyes on his son’s mistress he was enamoured of her that he immediately sent his son away on a campaign and then asked her to transfer her affections to himself. When she refused, he accused her of being a spy and had her drowned from a boat in the Lake of Ioannina, together with seventeen other ladies of what was alleged to be easy virtue who had been chosen to keep her company (On The Shores, 157).

Everyone visited the slave-market, trying by bribery to catch a view of the white girls, Circassians, whom the giaour was supposed neither to see nor to buy. Accounts of slave girls, in the context of Victorian writing and painting, seem to me definitely salacious - whether the style is romantic or poke-in-ribs jocularity - as indeed in the habitual tone of travellers' accounts of harems and of encounters with women in the East in general. There are hints of intrigue covered by chaddar and veil, and enthusiastic appraisals of 'forms' and 'figures' revealed by bodice or shalwar or chemise(15).

Layard gives an account of himself and a friend being decoyed into a palace in Stambul by a mysterious woman who turned out to be the Sultan's sister; so like an Arabian Nights tale is the adventure, with veiled beauties beckoning from caiques and go-betweens hastening through midnight streets that it doesn't quite have the ring of truth about it (Journey to Kars, 188).

I thought as I watched them of a description in Creagh's book of a voyage on a Turkish ferry when an Aga's harem was kept on the deck in a cage guarded by a Negro eunuch, food being pushed into them through the slats. These passengers could be the grandchildren of such a menage, so recent is Turkey's enlightenment (Journey to Kars, 162).

The old women sat at the waterside with their yellow jars, chattering with queer stiff movements, looking like a group of tough garrulous birds. They were almost outside of humanity by now. God knows what they talked about-insane little bits, raggedy odds and ends of life, gray pieces of nothing. Their breasts hung down like flat leather patches and their hair blew like straw in the sharp November wind. They were hideous, they were mindless, they didn't have anything left out of life, anything at all (The Asiatics, 55).

"Oh, Moslems do not like brothels. They believe that brothels are immoral. They think Beirut a wicked western city." "I didn't know that Moslems were so virtuous." "Oh," said Papandopoulos with a sly laugh, "they aren't! It is only their tastes are a little different! (The Asiatics, 4).

Reference to homosexuality are of course veiled and rare, the most open discussion of its prevalence in the East being in Pelgrave’s Arabia, where ‘the nameless vice and “disgrace baboons are free from”’ is blamed upon Muhammad for creating a society in which women, ‘too degraded for respect, may be also too despised for love’ (Journey to Kars, 188).

He loved roses, he said, and he started on a long joke about roses, two homosexual Turkish gardeners and a spade, but it didn't translate well (the punchline hinged on the similarity of the Armenian words for digging and buggery)(16).

Their men are almost all handsome with dark, supple skin and strong features; good bones, sharp eyes and tall, masculine bodies. But the women share their menfolk's pronounced features in a most unflattering way. Very few are beautiful. Their noses are too large, their chins too prominent. Baggy wraps conceal pneumatic bodies. Here must lie the reason for the Turks's easy drift out of heterosexuality (In Xanadu, 71).

Having read no private diaries giving an account of such things, I've no idea how possible it was for a traveller to have affairs with Eastern women, but it must always have been dangerous work to pick the rose from the encircling thorns-far more dangerous than to have homosexual relations (Journey to Kars, 188).

It was said, as has often been said about the favourites of sultans, that she had been a human attendant whose beauty had attracted one of the sultan’s agents and that she had been acquired by the harem. The hamam attendant’s main duty is to rub the bodies of women who come for their bath and, as this rubbing is neither therapeutic nor skilled, the purpose of it is ambiguous. For a long time after being introduced to the household, Nuri Bey had believed that the relationship between Miasme and her French companion Valance had been lesbian (When I Grow Rich, 36).

When they finished I stood there stark naked and extremely uncomfortable. Since it’d been in Turkey I’d come to think that many Turkish men tend towards bisexuality. Every cab driver, every waiter, every bazaar vendor had seemed to leer at me. Now standing naked in front of the customs officers I felt the same hungry stares. They made no effort to conceal their interest. I grabbed for my clothes and quickly put them back on(17).

There were all sorts of rules and there were no rules at all... Gambling was illegal, but all the Turks rolled dice and most of the foreigners played poker. There were strict laws against grugs and prisoners could buy hashish, opium, LSD, morphine, and pills of every shape, colours, and description. Homosexuality was a illegal and moral crime but it was rampart in the prison. The very guards who were supposed to be in control of this situation seemed to gain sexual pleasure from binding and beating a man with his pants off (Midnight Express, 74).

As we have seen in the case of themes developed in earlier chapters, the motif of sexual promiscuity, both heterosexual and homosexual which formed a definitive element in nineteenth century works, has continued to exert an influence on twentieth century literature about Turkey. We might in fact envisage a process by which the twentieth century author, inspired by the sights of modern Istanbul, has allowed his mind to revert to an earlier period, one no less imaginative, and has injected this into his present day account as if it were still valid. It goes without saying, of course, that in the context of the Turkish Republic such scenarios as those depicted are as representative of reality as if the surreality of Jane Austin were suddenly to materialise in the London of today.
 
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1-Paul Fussell, Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between the Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p.60. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its shortened title, 'Abroad'.

2-Frederic Raphael, “Empire Building” in The Sunday Times (5 December, 1993), p.6. Further reference to this review will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its title, '“Empire Building”'.

3-Paul Theroux, Sunrise With Seamonsters, Ist pub. 1985 (London: Penguin, 1986), p.146. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its shortened title, 'Seamonsters'

4-John Spencer Dixon, Representations of the East in English and French Travel Writing 1798-1882 with Particular Reference to Egypt, Unpub. Diss. (University of Warwick, 1992), p.25. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its shortened title, 'Representations of the East’.

5-John Coates, “Metaphor and Meaning in The Towers of Trebizond”, 80 (1987) 111-121 (p.121). Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its shortened title, '“Metaphor and Meaning”'.

6-Rose Macaulay, The Towers of Trebizond (London: Fontana, 1990), p.20. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its shortened title, 'Towers'.

7-William Gibson, Newromances (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p.116.

8-On September 1924, a commission of twenty-six lawyers set to work on the task of adapting the Swiss civil code to Turkish needs. The completed code was voted by the Assembly on 17 February 1926, and came into effect on 4 October...
 ‘Polygamy, repudiation and all the ancient bars to the freedom and dignity of women, were abolished. In their place came civil marriage and divorce, with equal rights for both parties. Most shocking of all, to Muslim opinion, the marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim man became legally possible, and all adults were given the legal right to change their religion at will’. See: Bernard Lewis, The Emergency of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford Univ. Press., 1961), p. 267. Also see Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy 1950-1975 (London: C. Hurst and Loupay, 1977); Stanford J. Shaw & Ezel Kural Shaw, History of Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, vol.II (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977).

9-Frederic Prokosch, The Asiatics (London: Robin Clark, 1991), pp. 40-1. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its title, 'The Asiatics'.

10-Joan Fleming, When I Grow Rich (London: Collins, 1962), pp. 35-6. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its title, 'When I Grow Rich'.

11-Dennis Wheatley, The Eunuch of Stamboul (London: Arrow Books, 1960), pp. 64-5.

12-Paul Theroux, Great Railway Bazaar, first pub: New York: Ballantine, 1975, (London: Penguin, 1977), p.47.

13-Mary Lee Settle, Turkish Reflections (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1991), p. 48. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its title, 'Turkish Reflections'

14-Eric Newby, On the Shores of the Mediterranean, Ist pub. 1984 (London: Picador, 1985), p.193. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its shortened title, 'On the Shores'.

15-Philip Glazebrook, Journey to Kars (London: Penguin Books, 1985), lst pub. by Viking, 1984, p. 187. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its title, 'Journey to Kars'.

16-William Dalrymple, In Xanadu: A Quest (London: Flamingo, 1990), pp. 55-6. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its shortened title, 'In Xanadu'.

17-Billy Hayes and William Hoffer, Midnight Express (London: Sphere Books, 1977), p. 16. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its title, 'Midnight Express'.

18-Ivor Drummond, A Stench of Poppies (London: Michael Joseph, 1978), p.99. Further reference to this work will be given after quotations in the texts, by mentioning its title, 'A Stench of Poppies'.