Petronella Wyatt: My food fights with Boris

I have been in Istanbul, partly to research a French-born collateral ancestor of mine, Aimée Dubucq, who, according to legend, was captured by Corsairs in 1778 and presented to the Sultan of Turkey as a gift. Known in captivity as Naksh, or ‘The Beautiful One’, she was 19 when she was taken by boat to Seraglio Point, where stands the Topkapi Palace, the most exquisite and imposing royal residence in the world. The chief black eunuch, Son Altesse Noir, inspected every new arrival to the Harem, and he would have escorted Aimée through its kiosks, pavilions and gardens of splashing fountains, past the sound of parakeets squawking and, less happily, the cries of miscreants in the dungeons. Not even Turkish scholars know what really happened in the Harem. The women, including Aimée, lived and died there silently, ghostly ciphers whose legacy can be seen on the worn-away marble steps.

The Ottomans were not depraved voluptuaries, however. The Harem was a practical and moral necessity. It was not thought befitting for Allah’s Shadow on Earth to sleep with his own subjects. The girls chosen to bear the Sultan’s heirs and who walked along the Golden Way to the imperial bed included Russians, Greeks and Syrians of stupendous beauty. The Sultan’s mother, the Valide Sultan, ensured that the Harem was run as strictly as any school dormitory. A consort who was caught behaving immodestly would be placed in a weighted sack and thrown into the Bosphorus. The Valide Sultan had the power of life and death over her son’s wives, and was the first and ultimate mother-in-law from hell.