LONDON.- A very fine and extremely rare hand-coloured copy of the six-volume ‘The Holy Land’ by David Roberts is for auction at Bonhams sale of Printed Books and Manuscripts in London on 22 March. It is estimated at £70,000- 90,000. The volumes date from 1842–1849 and were owned by Sir Eldon Gorst, one of Britain’s most controversial diplomats. In 1907, Gorst was appointed Consul General in Egypt which had been under British occupation since 1882. At first, he pursued a policy of liberalisation and bolstered Egyptian political institutions at the expense of the colonial administrators, much to their resentment. His aim was to weaken the influence of the Egyptian National Party which was campaigning for the British to leave. In 1908, Gorst heavily influenced the appointment as Egyptian Prime Minister of the unpopular Boutros Ghali, (whose grandson was General Secretary of the United Nations in the 1990s).
