Richard and Isabel Burton: This was the chapter that I most looked forward to, having had a fascination with especially Richard Burton for a long while, because of his translation of One Thousand and One Nights. The vessel, driven off course by a storm, took refuge in a Mediterranean harbour where it was attacked by Barbary pirates and she was seized and taken to the Dey of Algiers who, to curry favour with his master the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, forwarded her as a pearl beyond compare to Istanbul.

Aimee Du Becq de Rivery was captured by Barbary Corsairs, sold to the Sultan of Istanbul as a concubine and fought her way up the Seraglio ranks to become Sultana, mother of the heir to the Ottoman throne and one of the most under-rated but influential women in European politics at the time.The phrase ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ comes from this poem, and has become an iconic phrase in reference to the LGBT community. This book is actually a very engaging account of four women who threw off their corsets, shouted "to hell with convention" and decided to go and get some action in the Middle East. She influences her son to be open to European influences, particularly French ones, but when Napoleon divorces Josèphine, the French Emperor finds himself without the Turkish support he needs in a battle with Russia.

The four women whose stories are told in ‘Wilder Shores…,’ however, are far more unusual than remarkable—and quite seriously uninteresting. Yet of widely different natures, backgrounds and origins, all had this in common – each found, in the East, glowing horizons of emotion and daring, which were, for them, now vanishing from the West.Gene Wilder's tragic romance with Gilda Radner revisited: ‘I never said goodbye’ GENE WILDER'S sensational love life took a tragic turn as he only had eight years with the love of his life Gilda Radner.

We know that she disappeared at sea, but there is a prevailing legend that she was captured at sea, and that she supposedly spent the rest of her life in the harem of the Ottoman Empire. Oscar Wilde love quote “When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one’s self, and one always ends by deceiving others. In 1986, Radner was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer and was told she had a tumour the size of a grapefruit. The thread that weaves these women's stories together is that their hearts and lives were inexorably bound to the Near East, and all bucked convention in one way or another.A rich boat was quickly fitted out and Aimèe, dressed in a "lavish Oriental style and heavily veiled" was on her way to Constantinople. Isabelle Eberhardt: She dressed up as a man in the Arab desert, so I knew I was in for a great journey. Shane is the ulitmate guy with enough charm and wittiness about him that you cant help but fall in love.