Henry Nelson Wright, was an expert on Mughal coins whose collection is now in the British Museum in London. He also wrote books on the subject and was a founder of the Indian Numismatic Society. Coins gradually took over from his original career, as an Officer in the Judiciary of the Indian Civil Service, and became his passion.

I had heard he was a quiet, introverted man and thought perhaps his solace was found deep in the world of the coins; in the one their inscriptions and their mint towns conjured up. Through them he could imagine the lavish romance of the courts of the Mughal Kings. The machinations of courtiers and politicians. The movement of armies. Empires rising and falling, towns being established, merchants beginning to travel, transactions between financiers and money lenders and all by the Will of Allah. Because the obverse of every coin contained a plea for his good will.

The coins gave him a place for retreat. He could retire into the world they recreated. Into the Coin Department at the British Museum, hide in the stacks, with its rows of little drawers filled with round coins, where what mattered was minute differences of scholarly interpretation. And at the end of a day, spent out of this world and in one with more of a feast to feed the imagination, he returned home and lost himself in the world of his garden with its plants and butterflies.