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The Silk Road, which linked imperial Rome and distant China, was
once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it travelled
precious cargoes of silk, gold and ivory, as well as revolutionary
new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of
Buddhist art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic
slowed, the merchants left and finally its towns vanished beneath
the desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years. But legends
grew up of lost cities filled with treasures and guarded by demons.
In the early years of the last century foreign explorers began to
investigate these legends, and very soon an international race
began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings,
sculptures and priceless manuscripts were carried away, literally
by the ton, and are today scattered through the museums of a dozen
countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who,
at great personal risk, led these long-range archaeological raids,
incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese.
For nearly a century the two most powerful nations on earth -
Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia - fought a secret war in the
lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this
shadowy struggle called it 'The Great Game', a phrase immortalized
in Kipling's Kim. When play first began the two rival empires lay
nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end, some Russian outposts were
within 20 miles of India. This classic book tells the story of the
Great Game through the exploits of the young officers, both British
and Russian, who risked their lives playing it. Disguised as holy
men or native horse-traders, they mapped secret passes, gathered
intelligence and sought the allegiance of powerful khans. Some
never returned. The violent repercussions of the Great Game are
still convulsing Central Asia today.
Under the banner of a Holy War, masterminded in Berlin and
unleashed from Constantinople, the Germans and the Turks set out in
1914 to foment violent revolutionary uprisings against the British
in India and the Russians in Central Asia. It was a new and more
sinister version of the old Great Game, with world domination as
its ultimate aim. Here, told in epic detail and for the first time,
is the true story behind John Buchan's classic wartime thriller
Greenmantle, recounted through the adventures and misadventures of
the secret agents and others who took part in it. It is an
ominously topical tale today in view of the continuing turmoil in
this volatile region where the Great Game has never really ceased.
'Let us turn our faces towards Asia', exhorted Lenin when the
long-awaited revolution in Europe failed to materialize. 'The East
will help us conquer the West.' Peter Hopkirk's book tells for the
first time the story of the Bolshevik attempt to set the East
ablaze with the heady new gospel of Marxism. Lenin's dream was to
liberate the whole of Asia, but his starting point was British
India. A shadowy undeclared war followed. Among the players in this
new Great Game were British spies, Communist revolutionaries,
Muslim visionaries and Chinese warlords - as well as a White
Russian baron who roasted his Bolshevik captives alive. Here is an
extraordinary tale of intrigue and treachery, barbarism and civil
war, whose violent repercussions continue to be felt in Central
Asia today.
No other land has captured man's imagination quite like Tibet.
Hidden away behind the highest mountains on earth, and ruled over
by a mysterious God-king, it was for centuries a land forbidden to
all outsiders. In this remarkable and ultimately tragic narrative,
Peter Hopkirk recounts the forcible opening up of this medieval
Buddhist kingdom by inquisitive Western travellers during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the race to reach Lhasa,
Tibet's sacred capital. This epic, often harrowing tale, which ends
with the Chinese invasion of 1950, draws on a colourful cast of
gatecrashers from nine different countries. Among them were
adventurous young officers on Great Game missions, explorers and
mountaineers, mystics and missionaries. All took their lives in
their hands, including three intrepid women. Some were never to
return.
The Silk Road, which linked imperial Rome and distant China, was
once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it traveled precious
cargoes of silk, gold and ivory, as well as revolutionary new
ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centers of Buddhist
art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed,
the merchants left and finally its towns vanished beneath the
desert sands to be forgotten for a thousand years; however, legends
grew up of lost cities filled with treasures and guarded by demons.
In the early years of the last century foreign explorers began to
investigate these legends, and very soon an international race
began for the art treasures of the Silk Road. Huge wall paintings,
sculptures and priceless manuscripts were carried away, literally
by the ton, and are today scattered through the museums of a dozen
countries. Peter Hopkirk tells the story of the intrepid men who,
at great personal risk, led these long-range archaeological raids,
incurring the undying wrath of the Chinese.
This book is for all those who love Kim, that masterpiece of Indian
life in which Kipling immortalized the Great Game. Fascinated since
childhood by this strange tale of an orphan boy's recruitment into
the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk here retraces Kim's
footsteps across Kipling's India to see how much of it remains. To
attempt this with a fictional hero would normally be pointless. But
Kim is different. For much of this Great Game classic was inspired
by actual people and places, thus blurring the line between the
real and the imaginary. Less a travel book than a literary
detective story, this is the intriguing story of Peter Hopkirk's
quest for Kim and a host of other shadowy figures.
Paul Nazaroff was the ringleader of a desperate plot to overthrow the Bolsheviks in Central Asia in 1918. Declared 'the most dangerous counter-revolutionary at large in the Tashkent region' thus began an extraordinary catalogue of adventures with hair-breadth 'scapes and survival against all odds. Forced to live the life of a hunted animal his escape led him right across Central Asia, over the Himalayas to the plains of Hindustan.
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