Recently in History Category

A two stage read, but one I'm glad I persevered with - especially once Peter Fleming and Eva Maillart's journey reached the far west of China, and headed over into the Hunza valley and into what is now Pakistan, what was then British India.

It's a fascinating account of China and the North West Frontier in the mid 1930s, complete with what now read as antiquated spellings and opinions/perspectives. The book tell of the seven months Fleming and Kini spent on the 3500 mile journey from Peking to Kashmir, travelling by camel, donkey, horse and foot during a wartorn time for the far flung provinces of the Chinese world - and with the final rumblings of the Great Game still sounding loudly in this remote part of the world where Russian, British and Chinese empires met. As the intrepid explorers travel further west, they travel through a desert region populated mainly by nomads and warlords who view themselves as having more in common with their fellow Tatar tribes of Central Asia than the Chinese holding power in Peking.

Next: tracking down Forbidden Journey for Ella Maillart's version! Maybe a read for this autumn's Central Asia Overland trip.....

Amazon.co.uk link: News from Tartary - Peter Fleming

Again, another book it's taken me years to pick up, principally because for a long time I thought - incorrectly - that the author was Lord Byron, the 18th century poet. My mistake, my loss.

The Road to Oxiana is an account by Robert Byron, a distant descendant, of his travels through the Middle East to Central Asia in 1933/1934 - close enough in time to Empire for the Great Game still be living memory, and for the key geopolitical units to include Persia and Sinkiang.

Whilst Byron's privileged background means that his accounts of the people he meets is coloured by the social norms of the time (which isn't always bad - there are some fantastic encounters with Governors and Ambassadors), he did get to see and explore some amazing locations and architectural gems that are now either lost or out of reach. That said, I see that Wild Frontiers are running trips to Afghanistan, so perhaps, one day, I too will get to visit Herat.

There are wonderful photos too, some of places I have been lucky enough to visit and it's fascinating to see what has changed in the intervening 80 years, for example in Soltaniyeh Yazd and Isfahan.

For accounts of travels in the region in the last 20th/early 21st century, read:

* Shadow of the Silk Road - Colin Thubron
* The Carpet Wars - Christopher Kremmer
* The Places in Between - Rory Stewart
* Neither East Nor West: One Woman's Journey Through the Islamic Republic of Iran - Christiane Bird

Amazon.co.uk link: The Road to Oxiana - Robert Byron

A spur of the moment purchase at the St Giles Cripplegate summer fete, this book is a gem.

I must confess a general ignorance about Korea, other than random facts such as "It's the sticky out bit between China/Russia and Japan", "It is split into North Korea ("baddies") and South Korea ("goodies")" and "M*A*S*H was set in the Korean War (and not the Vietnam War as a lot of people assume)". Having read Simon Winchester's account of his walk from the island of Cheju in the far south to Panmunjom in the demilitarised zone that forms the frontier between North and South Korea, I feel rather more enlightened, and wondering how best to get my head around developments since 1988 when this book was written.

The route was inspired by the journey made by shipwrecked Dutch sailors in 1688, who became the first Westerners to enter and leave the Kingdom of Korea. As he travels, Winchester provides details of the history, culture and beliefs of the people of Korea since then, and develops insights into how these enabled them to survive the 20th century events of invasion, international, cold and then civil war and to create a thriving economy (Daewoo, Hyundai, Samsung), in the South at least.

Winchester is quite clear that he would have loved to have continued his walk all the way through the demilitarised zone and gained comparable exposure to the people and places of the North. For my part, reading his account has given me the idea of adding another destination(s) to my list (as Catherine observed: going for another country in the Axis of Evil).

Amazon.co.uk link: Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles - Simon Winchester

Back to history-based travel writing after my recent detours into mediaeval and (almost) modern history, with Andrew Eames' account of the mid-life Middle Eastern travels of Agatha Christie managing to mirror Colm Toibin's biography of a famous author theme.

I thoroughly enjoyed this account of Andrew Eames' journey from Berkshire to Baghdad. Tracing Agatha Christie's own travels on the Orient Express in its heyday (and minus murders), Eames takes us on an increasingly adventurous itinery from British suburbia through continental Europe into the Balkans through Turkey to Syria and finally across the desert and into pre-war Iraq. I realised that his trip to Iraq was with Hinterland Travel - run by a knowledgable and reassuring chap called Geoff, with whom I had an interesting chat at a Destinations travel exhibition years ago.

At the same time he tells the fascinating story of Agatha Christie's life, from her failed first marriage to her happier second marriage and archaeological digs in the then British Mandate of Mesopotamia. I swiftly revised my Miss Marple image ....

Amazon.co.uk link: The 8.55 to Baghdad - Andrew Eames

I wasn't too sure I was in the mood for an erudite biography of Henry James, particularly as I've never read any of his novels (although I watched the film version of The Portriat of a Lady, I was not inspired to read the novel), but Colm Toibin's lightly fictionalised account of Henry James' life during the final years of the 19th century was a joy to read.

This novel brings to life James' family and friendships, his American upbringing at the time of the Civil War and the ways he used his novels to provide alternate lives for the people he loved, and for his relationships with them. I put down this book with a feeling of immense sadness arising from James' inability to allow himself to recognise or accept the love he felt for others and they for him.

Amazon.co.uk link: The Master - Colm Toibin

A hefty hardback which contains a great tale of two chaps on the trail of Prester John, the mythical and mystical mediaeval priest-king who, legend had it, ruled over a Christian kingdom located somewhere in the mysterious orient, beyond the muslim-controlled lands of the Middle East and North Africa, and with wealth beyond compare.

In 2000 Nicholas Jubber persuaded his mate Mike to accompany him on a mission to follow in the footsteps of Master Philip, a mediaeval physician, who in 1177 was instructed by Pope Alexander III to carry a letter to Prester John asking for help in Christendom's Crusade in the Holy Land.

We follow Nick and Mike's journey from Venice around the Eastern Mediterranean and the still-troubled lands of the Middle East and thence into North Africa and south, through the Sudan and into Ethiopia. En route we learn how history, religion and current affairs continue to combine in much the same way as they did over 800 years ago when Master Philip and Pope Alexander were exchanging letters and progress reports.

A very readable book that ticks the boxes for travel writing and mediaeval+modern history. If you like William Dalrymple, you'll like this (and vice versa).

Buy it: Amazon link

In Xanadu turned out to be an excellent choice as my sole LHR departure lounge purchase. Having finished In the Company of Cheerful Ladies in Peshawar, I moved on to William Dalrymple's account of his journey from Cambridge to China, accompanied by the no nonsense Laura as far as Lahore, and subsequently by ex-girlfriend Louisa.

Following as far as possible in the footsteps of Marco Polo, William and his ladies travelled from Cyprus to Israel to Syria to Turkey to Iran to Pakistan and thence across China to Beijing. Fascinating, with history and architecture interwoven with pen portraits of people they meet en route - and interesting to see/hear the young William Dalrymple. My undergraduate summer holiday activities were nowhere near so adventurous.

Buy it: Amazon link

Another great book about another culture and another part of the world. Chris Bird's book tells the twin tales of his family's experiences of living in the Caucasus and his experiences reporting on current affairs in the region over the course of 3 (4?) years at the end of the 20th century - notably the various wars in and about Chechnya. The personal descriptions are supplemented by Chris Bird's own account and analysis of the region's history, and the complexities of Chechnya, the Caucasus, and indeed many of the republics that formed the USSR, Russia in particular.

I'd love to know how Chris Bird is getting on with his career change - the book says that he was studying medicine in London at the time of publication.

Buy it: Amazon link

I thoroughly enjoyed this account of the various Christian communities that live(d) in the Middle East. It's fascinating to learn how many of the regions we think of as muslim have older Christian cultures (plural), and for how long these societies have lived together in the Middle East. William Dalrymple does not shy away from looking at why many of the Christian cultures are slowly but surely disappearing, but neither does he lay blame in an indiscriminate fashion as he travels around the countries that form the eastern and southern borders of the Mediterranean Sea.

A bit strange reading it on a small island in the middle of the South Atlantic.

Buy it: Amazon link

I chanced upon this in one of Hereford's second hand bookshops (Hay doesn't have them all!!) and took it with me to Yalta, which is in the Crimea where Neal Ascherson's excellent anthropological, historical and politcal account of the Black Sea begins.

As Hazel and I visited the greek ruins at Chersonesus (now a seaside surburb of Sevastopol), the Khan's Palace at Bakchisarai, and the Genoese fortress and Soviet submarine base at Balaclava, and the harbours and hills of Sevastopol, the book offered additional backstory to the excellent information provided by Voyages Jules Verne's local guides.

The book is broader in the context than simply the Crimea; Neal Ascherson considers the majority of the Black Sea coast, and it is a fascinating part of the world, a real melting pot of peoples for millennia, and only in very recent history has it become perceived as a frontier between 'east' and 'west', 'barbarian' and 'civilisation'.

Buy it: Amazon link

The first of my post-holiday reading (so watch the rate of consumption drop off!), and I decided to continue the travel theme. I've long been interested in the life, times and travels of Ibn Battutah, but I was put off by the rather dry academic texts which were all I could find....... until I discovered Tim Mackintosh-Smith's tales his own 20th century travels in the footsteps of this travel-bug from Tangiers.

Starting from IB's Moroccan homeland, in the far west of the arabian, muslim lands, Tim follows his trail to Mecca, with a short excursion to the Crimea. This sidetrip within the then muslim world made for interesting reading as H and I head off to Yalta at the end of September. In particular it highlighted the fact that the Crimea spent a substantial chunk of time as a Khanate, having been settled by a segment of the Mongol Hordes that converted to Islam. Not what you expect of part of the Ukraine....

Fascinating stuff, told with human insight by Yemen-based Tim Mackintosh-Smith. I'm very glad I've got Norton Rose's leaving gift, Hall of a Thousand Columns: Hindustan to Malabar with Ibn Battutah , ready and waiting on the bookshelf to provide coverage of further voyages, ever eastwards.

Buy it:
Amazon link

Easy-reading account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, and the contribution made by the mysterious Dr William Chester Minor to this Herculean task. It is all the more fascinating, and sad, given that Dr Minor carried out all his work from his cell in Broadmoor (another Victorian innovation, then, as now, Broadmoor was an "Asylum for the Criminally Insane") where he was paying a life sentence for murder.

Buy it: Amazon link