On 3 July 1850, Queen Victoria was visited by two members of the East India Company. They wanted to give her something recently prised off Duleep Singh, the boy maharaja of Lahore. “They delivered up to me,” she recorded, “with a short speech, the celebrated Koh-i-noor, the largest diamond in the world.” She wasn’t mad about it: “Unfortunately it is not set ‘à jour’, & badly cut, which spoils the effect.”
The diamond went off to the Great Exhibition, where visitors also regretted the unsparkliness of a stone that had been described when it was carried off as “the historical emblem of conquest in India”. The Illustrated London News said: “The Koh-i-noor is not cut in the best form for exhibiting its purity and lustre, and will therefore disappoint many, if not all of those who so anxiously press forward to see it.”
