Quentin was an Indian chief taken prisoner by Mexican soldiers here in 1824.
It is set in a world where the leadership qualities of a dwindling race called the Hao mean they are valuable enough to be captured and forced to govern, and where the Hao Tahneh is forced to rule as both chief and prisoner for 20 years.
Admiral Graf Spee took Clements Master and chief engineer prisoner but let the rest of her crew to abandon ship in the lifeboats.
Murray writes of Italian noblemen, African chiefs, Russian prisoners, Australian Aborigines, even Aztec kings; of times and places, horrors and joys; of oceans, deserts, starvation — of quite simply everything — very beautifully, bringing it all close to us, to here, to now.
But following a row over alleged drug trafficking, the police chief became a prisoner in his own home, his men fled, and the showpiece attempt to extend control from the capital was a dismal failure.
The chief said the prisoner was a Palestinian, which, if true, meant he was also stranded, with the border crossings into Gaza now closed and the tunnels that provided an alternate route sealed off or destroyed.
Abdul Kuduz Irfani, the newly appointed district chief, said, "The prisoners are just glad to be alive".
EU foreign affairs chiefs said the prisoner release marked "important progress towards the improvement of relations between the EU and Belarus".
Pauline Crowe, the chief executive of Prisoners Abroad, said a visit every fortnight was more than British subjects held overseas could expect to receive.
In one incarnation, though, Montgomery becomes the prisoners' chief defender, a Jewish New York lawyer named Samuel Leibowitz.
