A real-life adventure that inspired countless travellers in fact & fiction, the ” Penguin Classics” edition of Robert Byron`s ” The Road to Oxiana”

Includes:: an introduction by Colin Thubron. In 1933 Robert Byron began a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, & Teheran to Oxiana
- the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan & the Soviet Union. ” The Road to Oxiana” offers not only a wonderful record of his adventures, but also a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travelers. Robert Byron (1905-41) was born in 1905, & educated at Eton & Merton College, Oxford. He died during the Second World War, when the ship he was serving on was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath. Byron`s ” The Road to Oxiana” is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. If you enjoyed ” The Road to Oxiana” you might like Charles Darwin`s ” The Voyage of the Beagle”, also available in ” Penguin Classics”. ” The greatest of all pre-war travel books”. (William Dalrymple).” What ” Ulysses” is to the novel between the wars, & what ” The Waste Land” is to poetry, ” The Road to Oxiana” is to the travel book”. (Paul Fussell). ” In any list of the great travel books of the 20th century, Robert Byron`s account of his travels in Persia & Afghanistan, ” The Road to Oxiana”, must be put somewhere near the very top”. (” Telegraph”).


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In 1933, the delightfully eccentric Robert Byron set out on a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad & Teheran to Oxiana
- the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan & the Soviet Union. His arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, although a wonder in itself, is not nearly so amazing as the thoroughly captivating, at times zany, record of his adventures. In addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers. Here, 'armchair travellers will find newspaper clippings, public signs & notices, official forms, letters, 'diary entries', essays on current politics, lyric passages, historical & archaeological dissertations, brief travel narratives (usually of comic-awful delays & disasters), &
- the triumph of the book
- at least twenty superb comic dialogues, some of them virtually playlets, complete with stage directions & 'musical' scoring.' Paul Fussell, from the Introduction to the OUP US paperback, 1982


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Each year, over 200, 000 people pilgrimage to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Often called the Way of St. James, this journey has been an important Christian tradition for centuries. ” The Road to Santiago” is one man`s incredible story of walking almost a thousand miles to experience it. As Rene Freund learns, when you reach the edge of the European continent having walked along the Way of St. James which pilgrims of former times thought to be the end of the world only then do you realize that the old pilgrim s saying is true: the journey does not end in Santiago. The journey begins in Santiago. In this vivid travelogue, Freund not only introduces us to the overwhelming natural beauty he encountered along the way, but also shares his experience of reaching his physical & psychological limits during the arduous journey. ” ...

In 1995, at the age of twenty-three, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps &, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up & down his arms so he could hold conversations, &, per a Communist dean`s orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, & Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China`s changes as he was. Thus began an impassioned immersion into Chinese life. With humor & insight, Meyer puts readers in his novice shoes, winding across the length & breadth of his adopted country --from a terrifying bus attack on arrival, to remote Xinjiang & Tibet, into Beijing`s backstreets & his future wife`s Manchurian family, & headlong into efforts to protect China`s vanishing heritage at places like ” Sleeping Dragon, ” the world`s largest panda preserve. In the last book of his China trilogy, Meyer tells a story both deeply personal & universal, as he gains greater
- if never complete
- assurance, capturing what it feels like to learn a language, culture & history from the ground up. Both funny & relatable, The Road to Sleeping Dragon is essential reading for anyone interested in China`s history, & how daily life plays out there today.

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Celebrating the wonder, comedy & adventure to be found in the most unlikely places, best-selling author James Dodson takes his young son Jack on a once-in-lifetime trip through the great cities & eccentric byways of Europe. There are two kinds of travel, someone once said: first class & with children. During the summer of 2001, Jim Dodson discovers that travelling with a kid can almost make a grown man feel
- & behave
- like a child again. Two battered bags & an old baseball glove in h&, father & son set out to circle the globe & spy the wonders of the world. But the best-laid plans usually tend to go awry & Jim & Jack encounter a myriad of unforeseen obstacles during their journey
- some hilarious & others heartbreaking. What they discover, on the busy marketplaces & sightseeing hot spots, the country inns & dusty back roads of Western Europe, are not the knights & dragons young Jack had once dreamed of, but something far more valuable: each other`s company & a world where, at the end of the day, unexpected laughter & pain can make us all friendly small-town neighbours. With humour, warmth & wisdom, James Dodson explores the meaning of father-son relationships & the importance of finding & savouring friendship, beauty & wonder
- especially when you least expect them.



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In 490 BCE Pheidippides ran for 36 hours straight from Athens to Sparta to seek help in defending Athens from a Persian invasion. He was hailed as a hero & his run stands enduringly as one of greatest physical accomplishments in history. Dean Karnazes honours this achievement & his own Greek heritage by attempting this ancient journey in modern times. His account of running the gruelling Spartathlon, fuelled only by the figs, olives & meats available to Pheidippides, will captivate even the most sedentary readers. ...

This is not a book about French Gardens. It is the story of a man travelling round France visiting a few selected French gardens on the way. Owners, intrigues, affairs, marriages, feuds, thwarted ambitions & desires, the largely unnamed ordinary gardeners, wars, plots & natural disasters run through every garden older than a generation or two & fill every corner of the grander historical ones. Families marry. Gardeners are poached. Political allegiances forged & shattered. The human trail crosses from garden to garden. They sit in their surrounding landscape, not as isolated islands but attached umbilically to it, sharing the geology, the weather, food, climate, local folklore, accent & cultural identity. Wines must be drunk & food tasted. Recipes found & compared. The perfect tarte-tartin pursued. None of these things can be ignored or separated from the shape & size of parterre, fountain, herbaceous border or pottager. So this is a book filled with stories & information, some of it about French gardens & gardening, but most of it about what makes France unlike anywhere else. From historical gardens like Versailles, Vaux le Vicomte & Courances to the kitchen gardens of the Michelin chef Alain Passard. There are grand potagers like Villandry & La Prieure D` Orsan & allotments & back gardens spotted on the way. Monty celebrates the obvious French associations of food & wine & finds gardens dedicated to vegetables, herbs & fruit. It is a book that any visitor to France, whether gardeners or not, will want to read both as a guide & an inspiration. It is a portal to get under the French cultural skin & to understand the country, in all its huge variety & disparity, a little better. ...

Another in our ” English Kitchen” series, this traces the development of Anglo-Indian cookery, in other words the curry, in English & Scottish cookery books from its earliest appearance in the 18th century through to modern works by Camilla Punjabi & Marguerite Patten. It wanders the lanes & byways of the British occupation of India, unearthing delightful accounts of Imperial eating & explaining how we have grown accustomed to the spice-box of the Raj. The broad intention is to reproduce early recipes for curry & accounts of Anglo-Indian food in their original words. The majority come from printed books, but some are drawn from manuscripts. The narrative traces our enjoyment of Oriental flavours from the 17th century through to the first appearance of a recipe for curry in Hannah Glasse in 1747. Thereafter, it looks at the various classes of cooks who produced popular & interesting recipes, from the female cookbook authors of the 18th century, to the club-cooks of Calcutta & London in the Regency, to the crusty colonels of late Victorian Engl&, & the refined French-influenced chefs of the fin de siecle & pre-First World War days. By way of coda, the authors consider modern recipes from authors such as Madhur Jaffrey & Sir Gulam Noon`s Chicken Tikka Masala, Britain`s favourite dish. The whole is ornamented by tasty extracts from past literature on eating curries hither & beyond. ...

Sometimes the hardest journey is the road home. Na Ga was always in search of a better life. But now she sits, alone, in a hotel room in Wanting, a godforsaken town on the Chinese-Burmese border. Plucked from her wild life as a rural eel-catcher, Na Ga is then abandoned by her would-be rescuers in Rangoon. Later, as a teenager, she finds herself chasing the dream of a new life in Thailand
- where further betrayals & violations await. Yet it seems that her fighting spirit will not be broken. But for how long can Na Ga belong nowhere & with no one? In the dingy hotel in Wanting she is forced to confront her compulsion to keep running, & to ask herself why, until now, she`s resisted the journey home. Longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2011.
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A searing account of George Orwell`s observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire & Lancashire in the 1930s, ” The Road to Wigan Pier” is a brilliant & bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger & growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury & great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell`s later works & novels, & remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice & class divisions in Britain. ...