The Riddle and the Knight – Giles Milton

Giles Milton on the trail of Sir John Mandeville, whose 14th century Travels took him from St Albans to Sumatra and China, via Cyprus, Constantinople, St Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai and other former crusader kingdoms.

The riddle (or rather one of them) – did he make these journeys for real, or just in his imagination?

Publisher page: The Riddle and the Knight – Giles Milton

A Walk Along The Tracks: Britain’s Disused Railway Lines – Hunter Davies

First published in 1982, A Walk Along The Tracks falls into the period when Dr Beeching’s pruning of the rail network was clearly still keenly felt and seen as one of the consequences of the nationalisation of the private, albeit much consolidated, private rail companies to create British Rail … the creation and floatation of Railtrack was still more than a decade off.

It’s a really good read, as Hunter Davies walks stretches of now-disused/decommissioned railway lines in various parts of the country – urban, rural, coastal, central, metropolitan, regional – telling the history of railways in the UK: the tracks, the trains, the owners, investors and customers.

Not nearly as dry and trainspotter-y as you might think!

Publisher page: A Walk Along The Tracks: Britain’s Disused Railway Lines – Hunter Davies

Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 – Rodric Braithwaite

As the British and US governments extricate themselves from the West’s War in Afghanistan (2001-2013/2014), it’s worth reading Rodric Braithwaite‘s account of the Soviet/Russian Afghan War a generation earlier.

It might sound like heavy reading, but our former Ambassador to Moscow brings a clear, light touch and human narrative to the politicians, leaders, generals and soliders who engaged in the Afghan War, taking us from the (largely political) events leading to the 40th Army’s arrival in 1979 to their final withdrawal across the Amu Darya/Oxus in February 1989. The USSR dissolved in December 1991.

No one ever really wins in Afghanistan.

Publisher page: Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-89 – Rodric Braithwaite

Among the Mountains: Travels Through Asia – Wilfred Thesiger

I managed to get through Wilfred Thesiger’s memories of his travels on the Pakistan side of the Hindu Kush and of his first trip to Afghanistan but gave up half way through Nuristan 1. Diaries of day by day encounters with people and places in the 1950s record a world long gone. Very practical accounts, a lot less aggravating than Eric Newby‘s, but not particularly engrossing, even if you’ve been there ….

Amazon.co.uk: Among the Mountains: Travels Through Asia – Wilfred Thesiger