||boek: The Lost Heart of Asia||N/A

||door: Colin Thubron

||taal: en
||jaar: ????
||druk: N/A
||pag.: 374p
||opm.: hardcover|used|with cover|a page right after the front page seems to be missing (with edition infos)|yellowed

||isbn: 0-434-77976-8
||code: 1:001962

--- Over het boek (foto 1): The Lost Heart of Asia ---

A 6000-mile journey takes Thubron (Where Nights are Longest) through Central Asia to the countries of the ancient Mongol empire of Tamerlane - Tashkent, Kazakh, Samarkand, Bukhara - more recently part of the Soviet Union. He supplies helpful historical background and a multitude of conversations with residents. He shows that while several generations grew to adulthood under communism, previously proscribed nationalist, Muslim and other religious practices have quickly reasserted themselves as these republics have gained nationhood. Thubron finds a range of reactions to the collapse of the Soviet Union: some people are nostalgic for the unity it provided, however repressive the regime, but many seem overjoyed and look forward to material improvements even though the problems confronting each country are sobering. Thubron has a gift for describing the ambiences of unfamiliar villages and cities, but his self-conscious literary style sometimes distracts from the instructive content. First serial to Conde Nast Traveler. (Oct.)

[source: https--www.publishersweekly.com/9780060182267]

Thubron travelled throughout Central Asia in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union and documented the widespread social upheaval in a region reeling from political change.

[source: https--www.bol.com]

A land of enormous proportions, countless secrets, and incredible history, Central Asia--the heart of the great Mongol empire of Tamerlane, site of the legendary Silk Route and scene of Stalin's cruelest deportations--is a remote and fascinating region. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of newly independent republics, Central Asia--containing the magical cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, and terrain as diverse as the Kazakh steppes, the Karakum desert, and the Pamir mountains--has been in a constant state of transition. The Lost Heart of Asia takes readers into the very heart of this little visited, yet increasingly important region, delivering a rare and moving portrayal of a world in the midst of change.

[source: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2022-01-04]

This couldn't have been a better literary start for this year. Travelling through early Post-Soviet Central Asia, Colin Thubron takes the reader upon a journey to one of the most underappreciated regions of the world. A region central to world history, a region where Muslims can be zealots as well as alcoholics, a region where the past is alive and dead at the same time.

In my eyes, Central Asia has always been enveloped in a certain kind of magic and mistery. Thubron has succeeded to give the reader a clear and thorough look into this world, while at the same time leaving a large part of the mistery and magic intact.

And even though Thubron made this journey thirty years ago, the book retains a significant part of its relevance. Issues like political uncertainty, economic inequality, ethnic tensions, environmental pollution, etc. Still pervade the region today.

If I had to summarize my feelings about this book in one sentence it would be: "One ticket to Turkestan, please!"

Max Berendsen [source: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2016-11-13]

I was looking for more in this book than it delivered and was disappointed by it.
Thubron accurately describes the buildings that interest him and which he has travelled so far to see. But detailed descriptions of ancient tombs and mosques can't take the place of photographs, and there aren't any here, not even black and white which would at least give and idea of the structures and environments.

I looked up some images on the web (Wikipedia and Shutterstock), especially of Samarkand, Bokhara and the Pamirs Unfortunately I can't see any quickly which I could paste in here and be certain they weren't under copyright. Samarkand, Bokhara and other places along the Silk Road were on my long-to-visit list for years, before I began to see some of the present day realities of Central Asia which held no appeal for me.

Thubron was in Central Asia not long after the Russians had pulled out of their colonies, leaving behind disconsolate Russians, Ukrainians, other Eastern Europeans, survivors of Soviet Siberian exile and their descendants. He recounts meetings and conversations with some of those people, and with locals who speak Russian, a language he spoke. Life was hard for most of them. Some lived in hopelessness, some not.

He asks about the rise of Islam now that Soviet religious repression has lifted. He's clearly interested in whether there nationalism is emerging, but I didn't get a strong sense of any pattern, rather that it was ethnic loyalty (Uzbek, Tajik) that mattered. Thubron doesn't seem particularly interested in analysing what was happening socially and politically in the countries he visited, but builds pyramids of anecdotal detail.

It is tiresomely over-written. Sometimes there were so many adjectives and adverbs that I lost sense of what he was trying to say.

As often happens with travel writing, I find myself feeling embarrassed for the people who were unfortunate enough to meet the travel writer. Drunkenness, slobbery eating habits, spongy flesh, bad teeth, foul breath and more are reported in detail, maudlin conversations and complaints are written out at length. I hope they have never read what he wrote about them.

Lyn Elliott [source: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2009-01-15]

I read The Lost Heart of Asia while I was living in the region, in the country of Kyrgyzstan. In this book Thubron travels throughout Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and - of course - Kyrgyzstan. This was by far the most informative book on Central Asia that I have read so far, in addition to being entertaining and well penned. I was a little disappointed by the fact that he spent by far the most time in Uzbekistan, and by the fact that he came to Kyrgyzstan at the very end of his journey, when his enthusiasm for extended travel was obviously winding down. However, I highly recommend this book to those interested in what life is like here Central Asia and/or the history thereof. Also, the fact that Thubron spent so much time in Uzbekistan meant that he penned pages upon tantalizing pages, which have left me itching to go there next.

Jane [source: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2011-03-19]

Thubron travelled through Central Asia in the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet empire. Enabled by his knowledge of Russian, he managed to do it largely without intermediaries, so this trip is far beyond what one would expect of a grand tour of this huge region. Yes, there are visits to the touchstones, the abandoned ruins of almost-forgotten empires, the unimaginable savagery of the Mongols, the still-worshipped tombs of Sufi saints. Yes, there is the obligatory tale of the vermin-infested underground prison used by the sybaritic emirs of Bukhara and the two British officers who spent years in it before their execution. Thubron recounts how Central Asia had played host to a strain of Islam that was inquisitive and intellectual (it produced one of the Middle Age's great thinkers, Avicenna) and how it was crushed. But what really sets Thubron apart is his affection for the people of these countries, and how they adapted to the wrenching decades of Russian domination, followed by the devastation of the Russian collapse. (This is still the nineties; the self-satisfied, oil and gas-rich Russia of Putin has not yet appeared, it is gripped by the chaos of Yeltsin). Thubron listens, not always the most notable talent of Westerners abroad, even if it's to the guide who swindles him, or the elderly widow who, having lost a father and a husband to the Soviet terror, still believes in Communism. He engages everyone, down to the shepherds who turn out to be some of the last speakers of Sogdian, spoken by Xerxes, Darius and Cyrus the Great, one of whom says of that language, without sadness, that it belongs in the past. Above all, in this collection of countries and cultures so poorly-understood in the West, Thubron has a talent for getting women to talk to him, whether it is the tough matron nostalgic for the Soviets, or the resourceful daughter-in-law who supports the family, or the Kazakh woman who dreams of being a conductor. And, in this inflation-ravaged region, there is always the dream of moving, to Thubron's England or New York. This isn't a book about dust and ruins or elites or about deluded, comic foreigners (I think Sascha Baron Cohen should be sentenced to memorizing it), it is about the people who live there, enduring and often failing but still struggling to create something new.

Nick [source: https--www.goodreads.com]

[2011-03-30]

I really couldn't get into this book, but I tried to plough through since it was a book club selection. Timing defeated me, and I had to return the book to the library, but I figured I can always pick it up again hopefully before the meeting, otherwise after, when everyone at book club tells me that the second half makes it all worthwhile.

Surprisingly, I had read the most pages in the book! Some got bogged down as early as page 35. My biggest complaints were that the author was quite smug throughout, and really put down the people he was meeting and describing. It was very disjointed and there were no transitions between big description/colourful character portrayal/moving to the next location. It felt like a large canvas of connect the dots, before someone attempts to fill in the page.

The language was very flowery and overly full of itself with big words that no one knows the meaning of. One of the book club members pointed out that every taxi driver had inscrutable eyes in a harsh face. Not recommended x 6 of us.

Tricia [source: https--www.goodreads.com]

Review

"An intrepid traveller who also writes beautifully, with wit and erudition." --Spectator

From the Back Cover

A travel book on the newly-emergent countries of central Asia which contain the magical cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, the Kazakh Steppes, the deserts of Karakum and the Pamir Mountains.

[source: https--www.amazon.com]

Personal account of a trip to a remote place [2021-10-26]

I thought it was an interesting addendum to Thubron's suite of travel books. A little more personal in terms of his interactions with the locals across the "stans", a slice of life. He's a good writer and brings out each situation in a realistic way. I enjoyed learning some of the cultural differences and histories of the various peoples of Central Asia. The book wasn't written to be some global political tract about the future of Central Asia, whatever that may be.

GKC [source: https--www.amazon.com]

An Ingenuous Heart [2014-04-06]

Enchanted by this author's trip along what he insists on describing as "The Silk Road" (a misnomer coined in the nineteenth century by German geographer Ferdinand von Richtofen, two thousand years after the trampling of the various northern Asian trade routes, this in turn a fact established long before silk was included among the panorama of merchandise), I was eager to continue with him in Central Asia. To my dismay I discovered a pitiable travel journal, superficial at best, often erroneous, unbearably naïve, written just after the Independence of what had been carved out of prior empires and khanates to constitute the five Inner Asian provinces of first Tsarist and then Soviet Russia. These wild and storm tossed lands had always been governed by a succession of tribes who ultimately found themselves caught up in the century of the Great Game, the sparring of Russia and Britain for control of the access routes into India. The subsequent disappointment, following the fall of the Soviet Unión, was magnified by climate change, the shifting of the desert sands, rivers moving in their course, government ineptitude, inflation and mismanagement, along with a crisis of both political and religious faith, neither of which had ever been clearly defined. And so progresses the book, to the same degree not really very clearly defined. It never takes shape, its convictions are vague and its judgements are vapid at best.

Carol Miller [source: https--www.amazon.com]

A portrait of a unique area at a unique time [2015-11-24]

What I enjoyed about this was not JUST the unique subject - how many travelogues of central Asia have you come across? - and not just the author's skill in painting a picture with words, but the time in history he was able to capture when the ending of the cold war was still fresh, the Soviet Union only recently buried, and the people most affected by it still trying to decide what it meant for them, and what their future held. In this I found not only Mr. Thubron's skill in painting vivid landscape without actually using a picture (with which I'm becoming familiar), but a rich look into both ancient and recent history that hasn't seemed to be as thoroughly addressed in the West.

Karl Sander [source: https--www.amazon.com]

Elegiac [2016-06-23]

Thubron's travels in the heart of Central Asia are for the most part a dour affair. He has a brilliant way with words and pen portraits of various informants spring to life with a mere description of an eyebrow and moustache. Few travellers would invite then sustain situations and people he encounters and seems to thrive on. They are fodder for his wry and frequently sardonic humour and his icy distance from them is maintained throughout. His architectural descriptions are the most elevating, despite the ruined state of many of the iconic buildings and suspect renovations to others. Conceding these gifts he frequently deploys excess adjectives which frustrated my reading at times. But such hindrances were trifling in the general flow.

Ronnie Bosch [source: https--www.amazon.com]

Real central asia [2015-01-07]

an intersting book for any history buff or any interest in adventure travel especially concerning the historical places along the silk road. The characters the author meets gives one quite in insight on the way of life in an area and how the environment shapes the type of person and character that develops due to those circumstances. The dangereous situations that the author was experiencing would shake anyone but he seems handle each one with the equanimity and calm of a seasoned adventurer.Well worth the read especially if you are curious about the state of these historical places at that time period.

mojo [source: https--www.amazon.com]

Thubron does it again!! [2001-06-04]

I ordered this book after having been blown away by his later book --the third book in his Soviet Union trilogy --IN SIBERIA, which I thought was absolutely amazing and incredibly involving and one of the best travel essays I ahve ever encountered--this book was good, but not quite up to my expectations which may have been too high based on the earlier read--in any event Thurbon is truly my hero, my soul -mate and I admit I have lived vicariously through these two books -- he is, if half of his adventures are true, an amazingly persistent and daring traveler. He has obviously done extensive research in anticipation of his travels to these remote and apparently soemwhat dangerous spots and I look forward to spending more time this Summer sharing more of his adventures -- though many iof his earlier books are, unfortunately, currently out-of-print.

Richard Kurtz [source: https--www.amazon.com]

resplendent with both the good and murderous qualities they displayed [2016-03-05]

Colin Thubron has the ability to put the reader into the atmospherics of foreign lands. He fills his books with sounds and temperatures of other worlds and paints the histories of these lands so we can understand some of the mechanisms of the past which seem to drive the present in today's Middle East and Far East, along with descriptive commentary on the characters he meets along the way. He clarifies what the news refuses to provide us, and opens us up to the ancient movers of history abroad, resplendent with both the good and murderous qualities they displayed. Wonderful reads.

Judy McElderry [source: https--www.amazon.com]

The Lost Heart, The Lost Way [2015-07-04]

Most definitely not a 'page-turner', but endlessly fascinating. The book in many ways reads just like the author's journey. A land of rich but almost forgotten history (a Canadian speaking), but populated by people of endless perseverance and adaptability; torn between the depth of their extraordinary history and the apparent bleakness of their present. Reading the book, one cannot but hope for their future to be better than the present, perhaps even an echo of their past glories.

George Roy [source: https--www.amazon.com]

The writing is good, but my goodness if the was your only ... [2014-08-13]

I have read several of Colin Thubron's books now, and he has quite the most relentlessly negative view about everyone and everything he encounters. The people he meets are presented either as miserable and hopeless; if they don't actually say this they are made out to be deluded fantasists. If a building is old and ruined this represents decay and neglect, if it is new or restored this is a symbol of soulless stamping out of 'true' national identity. I travelled in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan recently myself, and came away with a very different impression of places and people. The writing is good, but my goodness if the was your only source of information you would not be inclined to go near any of the places he writes about.

Ms Katalin M Svehla [source: https--www.amazon.com]

Gloom and Doom [2015-06-03]

The writer seems determined to cast a melancholy pall over the whole experience. Of course, after such cataclysmic changes in their country, people are going to be nervous and unsure of the future. However, his choice of adjectives such as "dead", "bleached" to describe the brick walls and monuments of Khiva and Bukhara must surely have been a deliberate device to extend the gloom. After my own recent visit, I feel he could just as easily (and more truthfully) have selected "warm", "glowing", "vibrant". Or was it always cloudy when he was there?

Lindsay Rollo [source: https--www.amazon.com]

I've traveled to many of the places that Thubron, the acclaimed travel writer and novelist, visits, but his take on them is much different from mine. He delves deep into the histories of the peoples of the steppes, mountains, and fertile agricultural regions of Central Asia, their art, architecture, belief systems, and cultures. It is a broad historical sweep, from the rise of the Mongol empire to Stalin's deportations to the wrenching economic, social, and political challenges faced by the governments and populations in the post-Soviet era. Thubron's research is impeccable, his descriptions of places and people engaging and lyrical.

David H. Mould [source: https--shepherd.com/book/the-lost-heart-of-asia]

[2020-03-30]

If I could have a long all-expenses paid trip somewhere, it'd be Central Asia, which is just fascinating. And this account of the author's journey into all the republics is quite beautifully, lyrically written.

A while ago I reviewed a travelogue and complained of the paucity/ quality of its photos. There are none here but you never feel the need of them. Mr Thubron does the photographer's job with his words.

starbox [source: https--www.librarything.com/work/51422/reviews/178705576]

[2016-06-05]

Hmm. So far, p 57, he's spent a lot of time drinking under the desert sun with the men. Now I suppose he's going to have trouble spending time getting to know the women, seeing as he's male and this is a culture of divided gender roles, but I hope he does find a way to learn more about the people who are actually getting things done.

His focus seems to be more on history, ancient, recent, and future. Long ago the region was more rich and powerful due to the Silk Road (?) and its precursors (?), then Islam came, and the Soviets, and now the Soviets have left, so, what's next?

I think I need to do some research. As I wrote the above I realized just how sketchy my understanding of the region is....

Ok, almost 1/2 done. Still dry. I don't feel like I'm meeting individual people or seeing separate places. Everybody is a type, either a blond Turcoman who looks too Russian to be safe, or a Turcoman who misses the Soviet rule. Everybody thinks that London is in America, or England is right next to Istanbul and America is just beyond that. Young women don't realize that their peers a few hundred miles away wear the veil. Nobody likes the Iranians. And everything is dead and dusty - and the Soviets aren't the only ones to blame. The only fancy thing is the purple prose.

Oh, and nothing happens. 'My driver took me out to Ghost Town number 4 and took a nap while I fought the wind/ heat/ cold to look up at the only minaret left. Then we had tea at his brother's house.' Repeat....

Ok. I read the last chapter. Believe it or not, it was exactly like my summary of the first several. So, I give up. Thubron's efforts to make my efforts feel just as futile as the lives of these 'lost' people were effective.

Cheryl_in_CC_NV [source: https--www.librarything.com/work/51422/reviews/178705576]

[2016-01-13]

Recent travelers to Central Asia include Colin Thubron, whose "The Lost Heart of Asia" (1994) covers more or less the area we traveled. Except that Thubron did this 20 years ago, when the Stans were clearly the ex-Soviet republics. One of the themes of the book is indeed how the Stans will develop, whether communism will come back, or Muslim fundamentalism will establish itself, or the Pan-Turkic region of influence will emerge, indeed something that I recall was debated at the time (when I was living in Turkey). Thubron is not one of my all-time favourites, but this is perhaps the best of his books I have read so far, a mix of history - including more and less relevant, yet entertaining anecdotes -, adventure travel and genuine contacts with the locals, which makes for a very personal story. He combines an extensive knowledge with a willingness to learn, a rare quality in mature travel writers.

theonearmedcrab [source: https--www.librarything.com/work/51422/reviews/178705576]

[2013-05-31]

The geographic descriptions left me a bit cold, but that's true of most travel writers. Meanwhile, there are passages in here that read like a novel; absolutely brilliant prose. Thubron's knowledge of the history of the region and his deft handling of its inhabitants is extraordinary. Central Asia is rarely discussed, but has been the crossroads of history and is even know undergoing significant change with great implications for the world at large. A bastardized form of Islam begins to inhabit the rotting corpse of a defeated colonial power in an area filled with crime and economic deprivation. Relevant? Absolutely.

BrianFannin [source: https--www.librarything.com/work/51422/reviews/178705576]

[2013-03-29]

I read this book as I was traveling to Kyrgyzstan. It's great. It made me want to visit the great cities of Samarkand and Bhukara though. I was sad I was not going there... ( )

jolifanta [source: https--www.librarything.com/work/51422/reviews/178705576]

[2009-07-14]

This is a travelogue of a journey through the five Central Asian former Soviet republics in the early 1990s, shortly after the collapse of the USSR. I realised that in fact I had read it shortly after it came out. In those days I was interested then in the legacy of Tamerlane and Ulugh Beg in Samarkand, which Thubron indeed describes in so far as it was there to be found. These days I am more interested in the politics, and things have moved on quite a bit in the region: the Tajik civil war, just starting when Thubron was there, has now been over for more than a decade; meanwhile we have had a revolution in Kyrgyzstan, increasing repression in Uzbekistan, the bizarre rule and death of Turkmenbashi, and most of all the War on Terror in the immediate neighbourhood. So the book now feels very out of date. There are a lot of drunken feasts, departing Russians, sweeping generalisations about the facial appearance of people from particular ethnic groups, which I began to find tiresome very quickly. I believe that Thubron did a follow-up volume to this, retracing his earlier route, quite recently but won't rush to pick it up (unless anyone strongly recommends it to me in comments).

nwhyte [source: https--nwhyte.livejournal.com/1267616.html]

--- Over (foto 2): Colin Thubron ---

Colin Gerald Dryden Thubron, CBE FRSL FRAS (born 14 June 1939) is a British travel writer and novelist. In 2008, The Times ranked him among the 50 greatest postwar British writers. He is a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Times. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Thubron was appointed a CBE in the 2007 New Year Honours. He is a Fellow and, between 2009-2017, was President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Thubron is the son of Brigadier Gerald Thubron and of Evelyn (née Dryden), a collateral descendant of the poet John Dryden and of Samuel Finley Morse, inventor of the Morse Code. He was born in London and educated at Eton College. Before becoming a writer he worked for five years in publishing in London and New York City, and made independent documentary films that were shown on BBC television. He is married to the Shakespeare scholar Margreta de Grazia.

Thubron's first travel book, Mirror to Damascus, was published in 1967, the first such book on the city for a century. It was followed the next year by The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon, a lyrical account of a journey through the country, pre-civil war, and the next year by Jerusalem. While starting a parallel career as a novelist, he completed a travel book on Cyprus, Journey into Cyprus, in 1974, just before Turkey invaded the island.

In 1981, during the Brezhnev era, Thubron broke with his earlier work (on cities and small countries) and travelled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey recorded in Among the Russians. This was followed in 1987 by Behind the Wall: A Journey Through China (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award), and in 1994 by The Lost Heart of Asia, the record of a journey through the newly independent nations of Central Asia.

In 1999 came In Siberia (Prix Bouvier, France), an exploration of the farthest reaches of the ex-Soviet Union, and in 2007, Shadow of the Silk Road, which describes a 7,000-mile journey from China to the Mediterranean encompassing cultures that Thubron has been obsessed with: Islam, China, the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey.

Most of Thubron's novels are notably different from his travel books. Several describe settings of enforced immobility: a mental hospital, a prison, an amnesiac's mind. Notable among them are Emperor (1978), a study of the conversion of Constantine, A Cruel Madness (winner of the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award), and Falling (1989). Others, however, use travel or a fictional abroad: Turning Back the Sun (1991) and an imaginary journey to Vilcabamba in Peru: To the Last City (2002), long-listed for the Man Booker Prize. It has been described as a "Heart of Darkness narrative" in a "Marquezian setting". His most recent novel, Night of Fire, is his most ambitious: a multi-layered study of time and memory, which several reviewers named his masterpiece.

Thubron says that he was influenced by Palgrave's Golden Treasury as a schoolboy, and was initially inspired by the travel writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris and Freya Stark. He admires the English novelist William Golding and chose Victor Gollancz's anthology A Year of Grace as his book for Desert Island Discs.

Selected works

• Mirror to Damascus - Heinemann, 1967
• The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon - Heinemann, 1968
• Jerusalem - Heinemann, 1969
• Journey into Cyprus - Heinemann, 1975
• Jerusalem - Time-Life, 1976
• Istanbul - Time-Life, 1978
• The Venetians - Time-Life, 1980
• The Ancient Mariners - Time-Life, 1981
• The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - Hamish Hamilton, 1982
• Among the Russians - Heinemann, 1983
• Where Nights Are Longest: Travels by Car Through Western Russia - Atlantic Monthly Press, 1984
• Behind the Wall: A Journey through China - Heinemann, 1987
• The Silk Road: Beyond the Celestial Kingdom - Simon & Schuster, 1989
• The Lost Heart of Asia - Heinemann, 1994
• In Siberia - Chatto & Windus, 1999
• Shadow of the Silk Road, Chatto & Windus, 2006
• foreword: Views from Abroad: The Spectator Book of Travel Writing, edited by Philip Marsden-Smedley & Jeffrey Klinke - Grafton, 1988
• foreword: The Lycian Shore by Freya Stark - John Murray, 2002
• foreword: The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron - Penguin, 2007
• foreword: Stalin's Nose - by Rory MacLean - Tauris Parke, 2008
• foreword: The Travels of Marco Polo - Everyman, 2008
• To a Mountain in Tibet, Chatto & Windus, 2011

Novels

• The God in the Mountain - Heinemann, 1977
• Emperor - Heinemann, 1978
• A Cruel Madness - Heinemann, 1984
• Falling - Heinemann, 1989
• Turning Back the Sun - Heinemann, 1991
• Distance - Heinemann, 1996
• To the Last City - Chatto & Windus, 2002
• Night of Fire - Chatto & Windus, 2016

Radio adaptations, stage and television

• Emperor - BBC Radio 4, September 1984, with Martin Jarvis as Constantine and Juliet Stevenson as Fausta.
• Great Journeys: The Silk Road - BBC 2 Television, presenter, 1989
• The Prince of the Pagodas - ballet scenario, the Royal Opera House, 1989, choreographed by Kenneth MacMillan
• A Cruel Madness - BBC Radio 4, May 1992, with Robert Glenister as Pashley and Harriet Walter as Sophia
• The South Bank Show - Time seen as a Road, on Colin Thubron, ITV television, 1992'

Prizes and awards

• 1967 Book Society Choice, Mirror to Damascus
• 1969 Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
• 1985 PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, A Cruel Madness
• 1988 Hawthornden Prize, Behind the Wall: A journey through China
• 1988 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, Behind the Wall: A Journey through China
• 1991 Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society
• 2000 Mungo Park Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society
• 2001 Lawrence of Arabia Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs
• 2002 Hon.D Lit University of Warwick
• 2003-9 Vice-President, The Royal Society of Literature
• 2007 Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), New Year's Honours
• 2008 Society of Authors Travel Award
• 2009-2017 President, The Royal Society of Literature
• 2010 Prix Bouvier, France, In Siberia
• 2011 Ness Award of the Royal Geographical Society
• 2014 International Prize, Spanish Geographical Society
• 2019 Edward Stanford Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing Award

[source: wikipedia]