Shamrock, Crown and Crescent

In the mid-19th century, the name of Eugene O’Reilly was known to millions as a byword for courage and controversy. A hero of the Young Ireland rebellion and a mercenary in the Hungarian, Sardinian and Turkish Cavalry, he was a man of complex loyalties whose exploits read like an epic novel of gallantry, espionage and political machination. His name was rarely out of the papers; his life anything but ordinary. Rumoured to be the illegitimate son of British statesman Lord Palmerston, his groundbreaking leadership of a Turkish regiment of tribal horsemen during the Crimean War saw him headhunted for a similar position in the British Army, where he became notorious as the accuser in the ‘Beatson Mutiny’. In post-war Turkey, he would gain further renown as a judge on a precursor of the International Criminal Court and as the instigator of a failed attempt to raise the Bedouin of the Hauran against their Ottoman overlords in pursuit of an independent Syria. A tale of adventure, betrayal, and unrelenting ambition, Shamrock, Crown and Crescent recounts the dramatic rise and fall of one of the 19th century’s most extraordinary figures: a man who defied the odds at every turn.