The Earl who dug up King Tut

It must be peculiar to have one of the last century’s most remarkable events associated with your family. This is something George ‘Geordie’ Herbert, 8th Earl of Carnarvon, knows a lot about. In recent years, the Carnarvons have been best known as the custodians of Highclere Castle, the Hampshire stately home at which Julian Fellowes’s ITV drama Downton Abbey was filmed.

But a century ago, ‘Carnarvon’ meant ‘Egypt’, rather than Sunday-night television. That’s thanks to the 5th Earl’s involvement in the discovery of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb in the Valley of Kings, near Thebes.

This year is the centenary of that miraculous event. In November 1922, the 5th Earl of