From Nineveh to New York: The Strange Story of the Assyrian Reliefs in the Metropolitan Museum & the Hidden Masterpiece at Canford School

Indiana Jones, move over. In John Malcolm Russell, you have met your match. All right, so Russell doesn't roam the world with a bullwhip in his hand; nevertheless, the adventures outlined in From Nineveh to New York are the very stuff of fiction--except that they're all true.

Start with one forgotten city from ancient times, Nineveh, and the swashbuckling 19th-century archaeologist, Sir Austen Henry Layard, who discovered its ruins. Add a pinch of passion in the form of Layard's patroness and close friend, Lady Charlotte Guest, and her jealous husband, Sir John, and voila! A perfect romance. Now jump ahead a century and see what happens when modern archaeologist John Malcolm Russell, himself an expert on Assyrian artifacts, discovers a forgotten relief where nobody expected to find one, and you have the added bonus of a thriller. From the deserts of present-day Iraq to Lady Charlotte's country estate, then to America and finally to the hallowed halls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Russell follows a particular set of stone reliefs, explaining as he goes the shifts in aesthetics, in art dealing, and in museums that have influenced their fate.

From Nineveh to New York is a history of Nineveh, of British and American artistic tastes, and of archaeology, all rolled into one entertaining package.