A hundred years ago, when Britannia still ruled the waves, the Royal Navy fell victim to a humiliating hoax, reports of which kept the public amused for a few wintry days in February 1910. Disguised as ‘members of the Abyssinian Royal family’, with woolly wigs, fancy-dress robes and burnt-cork complexions, a gaggle of young people managed to trick naval leaders into receiving them on an official visit aboard the state-of-the-art battleship Dreadnought, Britain’s proudest national emblem. The ridiculous party, which included Virginia Stephen (the future novelist Virginia Woolf), were conducted solemnly round the wonders of the newest naval technology, jabbering in a nonsense language and escaping just as the spirit-gum holding on their beards began to melt.
The prank’s mastermind was Horace de Vere Cole, the subject of this biography, who led the troupe, posing as a Foreign Office official.
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