Early Life
Growing up in France with his parents, Chirol lived in Versailles where he also graduated high school.
In 1869, the young Chirol, already bilingual, moved to Germany, residing in a small town near Frankfurt am Main. By 1870, the Franco-Prussian war had broken out which Chirol experienced from both sides. He returned to Paris in 1871 just in time to see the Germans enter Paris. Thanks to his good French and German, he was able to come and go easily passing for a citizen of either side and it was here that he began to acquire his taste for adventure and politics.
Given the chaos in France, the Chirols returned to their family home in Hove. In April 1872, Chirol joined the Foreign Office where he worked for until spring 1876. Unsatisfied with the slow pace of life in the Foreign Office, Chirol returned to travelling where things moved much quicker.
Having begun to learn Arabic before leaving England, he set off to Egypt arriving in Cairo where he took up residence. In 1879, he set off for Beirut not long after the British had taken control of Cyprus. From there, the travelled inland through Syria with Laurence Oliphant and from whom he'd later learn to draw. But it was here in the Middle East where he took up journalism for the first time writing for the Levant Herald, then the leading newspaper in the Near East.
From there, Chirol moved on travelling to Istanbul and later throughout the Balkans. From these travels came his first book, Twixt Greek and Turk.
Read more about this topic: Ignatius Valentine Chirol
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