November 2009 Archives

Bought second hand yonks ago (so long ago I can't even recall where), this relatively slim travelogue has sat languishing on my bookshelf alongside other books about places and eras I wished I'd been able to visit and record myself.

On the face of Mountains of Heaven looks as though it's going to be an annoying account, in the style of Eric Newby's A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, of a scion of the British Empire's boy's own adventure through the lands on the edge of empires.

But it's not. Half comprised of Charles Howard-Bury own edited version of his travel journals, with the remainder of the editing carried out by Marian Keane, Charles Howard-Bury does come across as an explorer-adventurer but one who is interested in the people, culture and wild life of the region; particularly the huntin', shootin' and fishin' opportunities on offer.

A man after my own "circular route" heart, his outbound journey took him from London to Russian Omsk, on a "cruise" along the river Irtish to Semipalatinsk and via the post roads of Siberia and the steppe, crossing from the Russian side to the Chinese side of the Tian Shan. He returned to London by way of Russian Turkestan and the Silk Road, taking in Tashkent, Samarkand (fascinating accounts of the Registan, Bibi Khanum mosque and Shah Zinda mausoleum) and Bokhara before crossing the Caspian, the Caucasus and finally the Black Sea before taking the train home from Constantinople.

He's in Central Asia at a tipping point. The British Empire is still going strong to the south, the pre-revolutionary Russian Tsars have expanded into the 'Stans of Central Asia and the nomadic Kazakh and Kyrgyz inhabitants of the steppe are shifting eastwards, into modern day Xinjiang only a year after the demise of the Qing dynasty and the province acceding in name to the Republic of China.

Less than 100 years later, my Central Asia experience was vastly different.

Isabella Bird's A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains and The Yangtze Valley and Beyond are still sitting on my bookshelf of travelogues to read, but Mountains of Heaven has finally (finally!) prompted me to pick up Tim Macintosh-Smith's The Hall of a Thousand Columns, which is proving to be another fantastic read. It's 1349 and Ibn Battuta is just about to head off to China.....

Amazon.co.uk link: Mountains of Heaven: Travel in the Tian Shan Mountains, 1913 - Charles Howard-Bury, edited by Marian Keaney

It's 1629 and an English lute player arrives at the court of King Christian IV of Denmark.

Through people's diaries and memories we learn of the King's passion for perfection and his desparate need for money, meet paper making Italians and Irish catholic dynasties, and understand how music, and love, can drive you mad, or keep you sane.

And there are some very powerful female contributors: the King's egotistical and estranged, vicious and vain wife Kirsten who is in the midst of an affair with the elusive Count Otto; Emila, her provincial sensible and savvy maid; the King's mother devising ever more inventive ways of hiding her hoarded gold from her near-bankrupt son, and the recently widowed Countess O'Fingal, Peter Claire's former lover, stuck in the wilds of Donegal.

Amaozon.co.uk link: Music & Silence - Rose Tremain

A speedy read after All the Pretty Horses, but then Commissario Brunetti's Venice offers a more familiar cast and (crime) scenes than two cowboys on the plains of Texas and Mexico.

In The Girl of His Dreams starts with the funeral of Brunetti's mother, and family ties and loyalties continue to play a key role after Brunetti and Vianello are called upon to investigate the discovery of a young gypsy girl's body in one of Venice's many canals.

Amazon.co.uk link: The Girl of His Dreams - Donna Leon

My first taste of Cormac McCarthy, courtesy of my Annapurna Circuit-er Sean, and a novel where you need to pay attention as you read. There's a mixture of languages and a lot left unsaid, together with complex relationships to untangle and cowboy-talk to understand.

Young cowboys John Grady Cole and his friend Lacey Rawlins have grown up in the American West as it leaving it's wild days behind, and decide to escape to Mexico to look for work on the cattle ranches there. En route they pick up another runaway, and a whole heap of trouble.

A novel that offers beauty and brutality side by side.

Amazon.co.uk link: All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy