A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for the Mastery of the Middle East

by James Barr

In his mid-fifties, Tegart had recently retired as commissioner of police in Calcutta, to widespread praise. Originally from Londonderry, he had been sent to the Indian city after it was beset by a series of politically motivated assassinations on the assumption that his Irishness endowed him with some special insight into the terrorist’s mind. In fact, Tegart had turned the situation around by a mixture of instinct, imperturbability, luck and a readiness to break the rules. Although tall and muscular, with dark-blue eyes and a Celt’s reddish skin, he proved remarkably adept at disguise, passing himself off as a Sikh taxi driver, a Kabuli or a Pashtun, in night-time intelligence-gathering missions. Despite the threat to his own life from bomb-throwers, by day he drove around the city in an open car; his dog, a Staffordshire bull terrier, skulked behind him in the hood. Tegart’s devil-may-care attitude inspired his colleagues, who became convinced that ‘somehow or other he could not fail’, a feeling reinforced by his survival of several unsuccessful attempts on his life – and another close shave that was self-inflicted.23 Having for a while used a small iron bomb as a paperweight, believing it was inert, one day as a joke he had hurled it at a map across his office. ‘Instantly,’ according to a contemporary, ‘there was a shattering explosion, part of the wall blew out, dust and debris littered the room, and members of the staff came running in convinced that yet another assa...