Paradise lost
11:53am Thursday 28th August 2008
Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922
Giles Milton (Sceptre, £20)
While British soldiers were losing their lives in Gallipoli, life in the Ottoman Empire was exceptionally good just a short distance away. The city of Smyrna - now Ismir in Turkey - had all the blessings of a peaceful history bestowed on it. Its cosmopolitan citizens, including fabulously rich Levantine families, Jews, Armenians and Greeks, enjoyed a social life of opera and yachting unrivalled anywhere in the world.
In one of the greatest massacres in modern history, all this came to an end in 1922 when Turkish soldiers - reacting to occupation by the Greeks - wiped out the city with an orgy of looting, rape and arson.
Milton puts us right into the smoke and fire of this European tragedy, superbly contrasting the halcyon days of a contented population under the amiable Ottoman governor Rahmi Bey to one of colossal disaster. Believing that Allied warships would protect them, the community of Smyrna became as vulnerable as the victims of the later Balkan genocide. The city died in a week.