First Russia, Then Tibet Travels through a Changing World

by Byron, Robert

• ISBN13: 9781848854246
• ISBN10: 1848854242
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-01-04
• Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks

Summary

Over the course of several months during 1931 and 1932, Robert Byron journeyed to three countries teetering on the brink of change. In Russia, which was stricken by famine, Lenin had just died, Stalin's dictatorship was in its infancy and the Great Terror was yet to begin. Having taken the first commercial flight to India, which took a week, Byron was thrown into the tumultuous last years of the British Raj. Gandhi was imprisoned while rioting and clashes between Hindus and Muslims had become commonplace. Finally Byron entered Tibet, the forbidden country. Exploring the Land of Snows, he saw Tibet as it was when the then Dalai Lama was still ensconced in the Potala Palace, twenty years before China's invasion. Blending classic travel writing with passionate observations on the deeper political and social issues of the time, Byron writes with uncanny prescience of the eventual horrors of the Soviet Union and the downfall of the Raj. As a piece of travel literature, First Russia, Then Tibet is compelling and beautifully-written. As a portrait of these countries in the 1930s, it is invaluable. Ultimately, it illuminates the constant quest for meaning that underscored Robert Byron's life and travels.

Author Biography

Robert Byron (1905 - 1941) was one of the twentieth century's greatest travel writers as well as a noted art critic and historian. He is the author of the acclaimed The Road to Oxiana, considered by many to be the first example of great travel writing. He is also the author of Europe in the Looking Glass and The Byzantine Achievement.

Table of Contents

"One comes away from reading him with a joyous consciousness of having seen for the first time a whole world of unsuspected things." -- Christopher Sykes

"Byron's skill at detail while delivering sweeping observations on the politics and turmoil of the times, is not only good fireside reading but it should be the aspiration of any serious writer attempting to define a journey instead of a trip." -- Kathleen Buckley

"He would prove hugely influential: on travel literature, on conservation, and on our appreciation of Eastern cultures." -- Richard Canning, The Independent

"The beguiling and heightened spell of sensory being which Stark is capable of conjuring, is something likewise cast by her travelling contemporary, Robert Byron. In First Russia, Then Tibet, he breaches the dogma-ridden bastion of early Stalinist Russia...  Down to earth, he is always passionate, politically astute, and exhibits startling powers of description that never flag." -- The Scotsman 2010 Travel Review

 

"A timely reissue...well worth reading as a window on a vanished world" -- John Ure, Times Literary Supplement

 

"...The book demonstrates why, in this changed world, affecting writing of any age should be cherished" -- Alastair Vere Nicoll, Oxford Today, Hilary Term edition