GENERAL GORDON’S SIEGE STAR: A Compendium

For nearly 150 years General Gordon’s Siege Star has occupied a rather ambiguous place in the world of medal collecting. An unofficial award distributed within a besieged city cut off from the Western world, any official records of its design, manufacture and distribution were destroyed when Khartoum fell in 1885. This somewhat mysterious provenance, combined with its crude manufacture, have made it regarded more as a curiosity rather than a genuine campaign medal. Despite the fact that it was worn by soldiers actually engaged in the battle for which it was awarded, it has been relegated to a position outside mainstream collecting while successive reference books have simply repeated information from past sources, reliable or otherwise. This book presents new information based on developing technology and a physical study of over 50 surviving examples with the intention of providing baseline parameters for verifying genuine examples. In addition to consolidating contemporary sources the author presents theories on the award’s manufacture and distribution in the hope that General Gordon’s Siege Star will assume a more prominent place in the world of medal collecting.