New Delhi — Many precious stones have a blood-soaked history, but a new book reveals that the world’s most famous diamond the Koh-i-Noor surpasses them all, with a litany of horrors that rivals Game of Thrones. The Koh-i-Noor (Mountain of Light), now part of the British Crown Jewels, has witnessed the birth and the fall of empires across the Indian subcontinent, and remains the subject of a bitter ownership battle between Britain and India. "It is an unbelievably violent story … almost everyone who owns the diamond or touches it comes to a horribly sticky end," says British historian William Dalrymple, who co-authored Kohinoor: The story of the world’s most infamous diamond, with journalist Anita Anand. "We get poisonings, bludgeonings, someone gets their head beaten with bricks, lots of torture, one person blinded by a hot needle. There is a rich variety of horrors in this book," Dalrymple told AFP.. In one particularly gruesome incident the book relates, molten lead is poured into...
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