Jerusalem: The Biography

* The full story of Parker is told here for the first time, based not only on his letters and accounts but also Juvelius’ prophecies. Even in 1921, Parker’s agents in Jerusalem were still suing him for unpaid fees. The Flashman-esque Parker skulked at headquarters and avoided the trenches in the Great War, never married but kept multiple mistresses, inherited the earldom of Morley and the stately home in 1951 and proudly told his family that he meant to spend every penny of his inheritance. Even in old age, he remained in the words of one of the family ‘a vain, venal, unreliable blacksheep who left nothing, a namedropper and boaster’. He lived until 1962, but he never mentioned Jerusalem and there were no papers – until in 1975 the Parker lawyers found a file that they returned to the Sixth Earl of Morley. For many years, the papers were forgotten, but the earl and his brother Nigel Parker kindly made them available to this author. Juvelius, becoming a librarian in Vyborg, wrote a novel based on the story and died of cancer in 1922. This episode left little trace in Jerusalem, but in the tunnels of Ophel, now the site of Ronny Reich’s excavation of those huge Canaanite towers, a small cave leads to an abandoned bucket that once belonged to Monty Parker.