The Cult of King Tut
Bbc Radio 4

Any critic of Western cultural expropriators would have had a field day with Patricia Clavin’s account of King Tutankhamen’s lightning ascent into the popular imagination of the post-Great War era (28 October.) From the moment the archaeologist, Howard Carter, and his sponsor, Lord Carnarvon, opened up the pharaonic tomb in 1922 the world’s media snapped into gear.

Literally snapped, that is. Carnarvon had signed an exclusive deal with The Times, in whose august columns 142 images taken by the archaeological photographer, Harry Burton, appeared five days later. Artfully shot and carefully stage-managed, Burton’s picture gallery went down a storm. In the 10 years that it took Carter to complete his excavations, a shrewdly conducted press campaign kept the newspapers permanently onside.