In the early spring of 2012, I was mopping up the research for my doctoral thesis, which is concerned with the political aspect of exploration in central Asia during the height of the Great Game, the shadowy cold war played out between Britain and Russia in the region. During the course of my studies I had encountered a Captain Ralph Patteson Cobbold who travelled widely across this dangerous landscape in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Officially he was travelling purely for ‘sport and recreation’ but he was undoubtedly spying for the Government of India. Having gleaned all I could about Ralph from the India Office Records at the British Library, from the National Archives, the Royal Geographical Society and even from the National Archives of India in New Delhi, there was one last place I felt I ought to look. I sent a hopeful email to the Cobbold Family History Trust and almost immediately received a reply from Anthony Cobbold, its keeper, inviting me to visit him.

I am now embarrassed to confess that, before I first visited the Trust, my ignorance of his family was complete save for that I had learned of Ralph. From the Trust, I learned a little more about his central Asian exploits and much more about other risky missions he undertook later. I immediately realised that here was a man who deserved a biography and, over lunch, I floated my idea.