When in 1823 the Himalayan explorer William Moorcroft managed to intercept a letter from the Russian Foreign Minister, Count Nesselrode, to Ranjit Singh, it seemed to confirm all the hawks’ worst fears. These fears, and the political paranoia they generated, triggered a wave of Russophobia in the British and British Indian press, where Russia increasingly came to be depicted as a barbaric and despotic menace to liberty and civilisation.
