Howard Carter's career was a remarkable one: he had arrived in Egypt as a 17-year old "tracer" with rudimentary education, and progressed to become the first Chief Inspector of Antiquities in Upper Egypt. An improbable but auspicious partnership with the 5th Earl of Carnarvon developed in which the young Carter acted as assistant and "learned man" to the aristocrat's excavations in the Theban necropolis. But it was the legendary discovery of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the Kings and Carter's painstaking clearance of the intact royal burial that was to secure his place in history. He became an international celebrity, simultaneously honoured and vilified wherever he went, but he was also a sad, disillusioned man whose success never brought any reward of happiness. T.G.H. James biography is both the story of a renowned archaeologist and of an essentially tragic human being.