Austen Henry Layard (Paperback)

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Sir Austen Henry Layard GCB, PC was a British traveller, archaeologist, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, author, politician and diplomat, best known as the excavator of Nimrud. Layard was born in Paris, France, to a family of Huguenot descent. His father, Henry Peter John Layard, of the Ceylon Civil Service, was the son of Charles Peter Layard, dean of Bristol, and grandson of Daniel Peter Layard, the physician. Through his mother, a daughter of Nathaniel Austen, banker, of Ramsgate, he was partly Spanish descent. His uncle was Benjamin Austen, a London solicitor and close friend of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1820s and 1830s. His brother was the ornithologist Edgar Leopold Layard. Much of Layard's boyhood was spent in Italy, where he received part of his schooling, and acquired a taste for the fine arts and a love of travel; but he was at school also in England, France and Switzerland