KOH-I-NOOR: THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD’S MOST INFAMOUS DIAMOND

TROGER LEWIS

HE Koh-i-noor diamond, which weighs 105 carats (or 21 grams), currently resides in the Queen Consort’s crown, kept under guard in the Tower of London.

The Queen Mother wore it to State Openings of Parliament during the reign of George VI, and its last public outing was upon the cushion on the coffin at her state funeral in 2002.

Its next wearer is likely to be ‘Queen’ Camilla at the coronation of King Charles III. If the Duchess of Cornwall reads this book about its history, however, she may start to have misgivings.

‘The gem rained misfortune on unworthy mortal custodians,’ we are told by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand.

On the very day it arrived in London in 1850, Queen Victoria was hit on the head by a would-be assassin and former prime minister Robert Peel was thrown from his horse — an accident that killed him.

The Koh-i-noor, with its ‘short but irregular crystal tails’, got its name (meaning ‘mountain of light’) from its resemblance to ‘declivities falling from a himalayan snow-peak’.

Indian diamonds are alluvial, sieved and extracted as natural crystals from the sand and gravel of riverbeds.

Quite where the Koh-i-noor came from nobody knows — it may have been the eye of an idol in a temple in southern India, stolen by marauding Turks. But we do know it was at the centre of centuries of bloody conquests as it bounced bewilderingly between rulers and despots.