a French protectorate. He was by now a senior and experienced Consul. Anglo-French relations at the time were at a low ebb, especially following Britain's invasion of Egypt in 1882, and local relation in Tunisia were especially soured. It fell to Sandwith to help put them back on an even keel, working with successive French officials, whilst at the same time upholding Britain's interests and those of a large and somewhat disputatious British community. He was able successfully to balance the various pressures and left with the respect of the French, the local British community, and the Foreign Office, which promoted him to Consul General in 1888 and posted him to Odessa. Although Sandwith's consular district was his largest yet - the modern Ukraine and large areas beyond it – but this, his final post, turned out to be an anti-climax. He found he was no longer a political officer; southern Russia raised no special issues that affected Anglo-Russian relations, which the Ambassador handled in St Petersburg. The basic consular duties were not exacting. He found the salary (effectively reduced by the exchange rate) inadequate. The only new issue was British concern about Russian ambitions in central Asia, and it fell to him and his team to submit frequent reports on military activities. At one point he recruited a clandestine agent to tell him about ship movements in the harbour at Odessa. But even this work was pretty straightforward. The one issue that greatly exercised him was official Russian policy and public attitudes towards the Jewish community, on which he sent highly critical reports to London. He decided to retire on reaching sixty. The actual date was determined by the death in 1891 in Britain of his second daughter, aged seventeen. He was further disappointed to find his pension was less than he had expected. Archaeology Sandwith's interests were not confined to diplomacy. In two posts – Cyprus and Crete – he engaged in the areas' archaeology and in both he left his mark. During his time in Cyprus, he amassed a large collection of Cypriot antiquities, through his colleagues such as Luigi Palma di Cesnola, Robert Hamilton Lang and Demetrios Pierides who were conducting excavations throughout the island. He is notable for publishing the first attempt at a typology of Cypriot pottery in a paper delivered at the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1871 and was later published