Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Book Review: The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville by Giles Milton
This is the third book of Giles Milton's that I have read in the past year or so. First was "Big Chief Elizabeth" and second was "Samurai William", both highly enjoyable, well-written historical non-fiction works looking at particular times and people in history: the first dealing with founding of the Jamestown colony in the States, the second about an Elizabethan English adventurer who eventually became a samurai in Japan. Both fascinating stories. So I have started to seek out his other books, and ordered this one online from Chapters a couple of weeks ago. I haven't been disappointed.

Riddle is ostensibly all about Sir John Mandeville, the author of the "Travels of Sir John Mandeville", which, up until the Victorian era, was considered a more commanding piece of literature than the works of Chaucer, with whom he was a contemporary. I've never read the book myself, but anybody who has seen the medieval pictures of fantastical men with their faces in their chests or having dog's heads or bearing horns sticking out either side of their heads. But the first part of the book is devoted primarily to Madeville's pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and the author uses this as a stepping stone – and excuse – to travel in his footsteps.

It's a great romp, which takes the author to Istanbul, the Tukish occupied area of the island of Cypress, the Egyptian sanctuary of St. Catherine's and to the Jerusalem. In it Milton finds a lot of information which seems to confirm Mandelville's accounts of his pilgrimage, though for the most part it is the modern observations that Milton makes that are more interesting. It is easily his most personable book, combining both historical investigation with a healthy dollop of travelogue. At times the search for traces of Mandeville seem almost peripheral to the author's journeys, which makes for a more enjoyable read, as he describes such things as the fortress housing the modern-day Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul, or quietly pondering over the bones of monks kept in a store-room and then interrupted by a loud American soldier visiting St. Catherine's, and seemingly always running into English-born monks in the most remote locations.

In the end Milton makes a good case that the Mandeville most likely did make his pilgrimage, and that the second, more tabloid-esque part of the book describing his journey into more fantastic realms was meant to be taken more as metaphor preaching tolerance and greater self-awareness in the medieval Christian. But everybody got fixed on these latter stories, and as a result it was this book that many of the later great explorers, including Christopher Columbus, would cite as their inspiration.

Another good read from Mr. Milton. After finishing this book off on the train ride home, I dropped by a bookshop on the way home and picked up his "Nathaniel's Nutmeg", the book for which he is best known.