Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
    The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
    The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia
    Audiobook17 hours

    The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

    Written by Peter Hopkirk

    Narrated by Alex Wyndham

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The Great Game between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia was fought across desolate terrain from the Caucasus to China, over the lonely passes of the Parmirs and Karakorams, in the blazing Kerman and Helmund deserts, and through the caravan towns of the old Silk Road-both powers scrambling to control access to the riches of India and the East. When play first began, the frontiers of Russia and British India lay 2000 miles apart; by the end, this distance had shrunk to twenty miles at some points. Now, in the vacuum left by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there is once again talk of Russian soldiers "dipping their toes in the Indian Ocean."

    The Washington Post has said that "every story Peter Hopkirk touches is totally engrossing." In this gripping narrative he recounts a breathtaking tale of espionage and treachery through the actual experiences of its colorful characters. Based on meticulous scholarship and on-the-spot research, this is the history at the core of today's geopolitics.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateAug 29, 2017
    ISBN9781515987956
    The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia

    Related to The Great Game

    Related audiobooks

    History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Puncturing Putin’s Dangerous Myths

      Nov 24, 2022

      PERHAPS LIKE INVESTMENT advisers’ caveats that past performance may not be an assured promise of future profits, historians ought to issue a health warning when making predictions about the future, which can be a precariously exposed business. In 201

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Great Unravelling

      Dec 28, 2022

      The Great Unravelling
      3 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Jan 21, 2021

      Edward IV’s brother is apparently drowned in a barrel of wine Even by the standards of medieval England, George, Duke of Clarence met a colourful end. “Take him on the costard with the hilts of thy sword,” says one of his two murderers in Shakespeare

      5 min read

    • Article

      66

      Aug 3, 2023

      66
      5 min read

    • Article

      Putin’s Grand Plan

      Jan 29, 2023

      Putin’s Grand Plan
      4 min read

    • Article

      Myths Of The Motherland

      Sep 1, 2022

      According to celebrated Russia scholar Orlando Figes, Westerners tend to assess Russian domestic and foreign policy without understanding the country’s distinctive history. Even those who know it underestimate the importance of Russia’s national myth

      4 min read

    • Article

      Nation Building

      Sep 1, 2022

      Nation Building
      4 min read

    • Article

      Besieged

      Aug 25, 2020

      Besieged
      10 min read

    • Article

      Heirs to Byzantium

      Apr 27, 2023

      LIKE THE TSARS THAT PRECEDED HIM, VLADIMIR Putin regards Russia as the heir to Byzantium, the Orthodox Christian empire that dominated much of Southeastern Europe and the Middle East for a thousand years. He has spoken of Moscow as the Third Rome, th

      8 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Mar 18, 2021

      Anniversaries
      4 min read

    • Article

      Classical Corner

      Apr 21, 2022

      Classical Corner
      5 min read

    • Article

      ‘You Have To Do Or Die’

      Nov 6, 2018

      ‘You Have To Do Or Die’
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Russia-Ukraine War

      Sep 20, 2023

      The Russia-Ukraine War
      5 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Apr 14, 2022

      “English settlers planted colonies in Crimea and on the Sea of Azov” “War has returned to Europe”, said the BBC News. Watching TV pictures from Ukraine, many thoughts crowd the mind. I’m sure that most of us, especially those of my generation and old

      3 min read

    • Article

      Wandering Stars

      Jun 9, 2022

      Nomads: The Wanderers Who Shaped Our World by Anthony Sattin John Murray, 368 pages, £25 “There’s real life for you...The open road, the dusty highway.” Mr Toad’s encomium to a nomadic life finds a more serious-minded echo in Anthony Sattin’s new boo

      2 min read

    • Article

      The War That Nobody Wanted To See Coming

      Mar 25, 2022

      FOR THREE MONTHS everyone argued about whether there would be a war, whether Vladimir Putin was bluffing or serious. Some of the Russia experts who had long told people to take it easy were telling people to get worried. Others, who had long criticis

      20 min read

    • Article

      Naming Rights

      Jan 25, 2022

      Naming Rights
      4 min read

    • Article

      Exception And Rule

      Sep 9, 2022

      Exception And Rule
      3 min read

    • Article

      An Adventurer’s Idol

      Oct 24, 2023

      An Adventurer’s Idol
      6 min read

    • Article

      What Was Lost

      Mar 16, 2023

      In October 1938, some 6,500 Jews living in Germany were arrested without warning and dumped by police outside the Polish frontier village of Zbąszyń. At first, the surprised Polish border guards denied them entry but, after a standoff, these wretched

      2 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Sep 29, 2022

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      Anniversaries

      Aug 5, 2021

      Anniversaries
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Last Kingdom

      Jul 12, 2022

      The Last Kingdom
      6 min read

    • Article

      Ukraine's Defiant History

      Jan 18, 2024

      Ukraine's Defiant History
      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Great Game

    4.5/5

    406 ratings22 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This book blew my mind. It is excellent and the narration is perfect.
    • 4/5
      Well researched and insightful. Doesn’t cover the Russian side as well as the British side. Remarkable that the Soviet, UK or US governments didn’t learn much from these Afghanistan misadventures from a 100 years ago. We could claim that were more enlightened than the 19th century and yet.
    • 5/5
      A great book! Lots of action and a wonderful background in Russian and British relations.
    • 2/5
      Beyond my own interest level, and not that well written. > Every Buddhist carried a rosary of 108 beads on which to count his prayers, and also a small wood and metal prayer-wheel which he spun as he walked. Both of these Montgomerie turned to his advantage. From the former he removed eight beads, not enough to be noticed, but leaving a mathematically convenient 100. At every hundredth pace the Pundit would automatically slip one bead. Each complete circuit of the rosary thus represented 10,000 paces.
    • 5/5
      Magisterial account of the 'Great Game' played by Great Britain and Russia throughout the 19th Century in Asia. Though familiar with many of the incidents covered here, better understanding the chronology brought a whole new dimension to the history - how Russia's steady advance through guile and conquest did result in a threat to India that GB countered at every stage.
    • 3/5
      The phrase ‘The Great Game’ has been immortalised through Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim. The eponymous young protagonist becomes a vital link in the intelligence network developed by the British administration in Northern India during the 1880s to monitor, and then thwart, threatened incursions into central Asia by the Russians. Kipling did not coin the phrase, which was first employed by Captain Arthur Connolly, who was executed in Bokhara in 1842 at the order of the Emir, after having been captured on a spying mission.Throughout the late eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries, Russia expanded its already considerable sphere of influence at a vast rate, gradually annexing and then consolidating the largely barren tracts constituting Siberia to the east. It also turns its attention towards British-occupied India to the south, seeking to expand through Afghanistan and surrounding lands. Britain was acutely aware of these expansionist ambitions, which were exacerbated by alliances between Russia and Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, which had the express aim of conquering and then sharing India. British diplomats were, consequently, relentless in their bids to make a succession of treaties with the rulers of neighbouring territories in a bid to establish a buffer zone between Russian-held areas and the borders of its own Empire.The lands in question were certainly worthy of colonial consideration. Names such as Bokhara, Samarkand, Trebizond and Khiva had already been romanticised as sources of exotic eastern splendour and came to feature regularly in military intelligence despatches. The terrain was inhospitable in the extreme, but the lure of the hypothesised riches was stronger still.This, then, is the rich vein of history upon which Peter Hopkirk draws for his comprehensive history of British engagement in intelligence missions throughout Central Asia. I had previously read, and enjoyed, his books on the derring-do of the members of the Secret Operations Executive during the Second World War. With those books, however, the ambit was narrower, and his accounts focused on the detail of the missions. I found this book less engrossing, and wonder whether Hopkirk had misplaced his efforts. He had clearly conducted exhaustive research, but seemed unsure whether he was writing a formal history of the period or, instead, a fast-paced thriller. I suspect that as a boy Hopkirk probably devoured the works of G. A. Henty (and why not? so did I!), and this book adopts a similar tone. Henty’s books have long been out of fashion, both because of their dated content but and also their stilted style. Having read a host of modern history works that combine rigorous research with clarity of address, I found this book sadly dated. Overall, I found its rather outmoded attempts to inject immediacy failed, and the tone of the book reminded me of the rather patronising history text books that I had to wade through as a thirteen year old.
    • 4/5
      Although the expression was popularized by Kipling in Kim, it was actually coined by Captain Arthur Conolly – who ended up losing his own version, beheaded in 1842, with Colonel Charles Stoddart, in front of the palace of the Emir of Bokhara. A Russian official called it “the tournament of shadows”; later Soviet historians translated the English phrase as большая игра – “Great Game”. Peter Hopkirk’s book is a fascinating read, about a part of the world that has had little interest for Americans – until 2001/09/11. The book was written in the Soviet era (1990) but got a new forward in 2006; Hopkirk comments that his research was actually easier in the Soviet era because you only needed one visa while now you need one for Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
      The British wouldn’t have cared what the Tsars did if they hadn’t found themselves ruling India. Both England and its enemies considered India the keystone of the whole British Empire – remove it and the edifice would topple. (Interestingly enough, I’ve never read a dispassionate analysis of that – however, the important thing is that everybody believed it). Hopkirk doesn’t concern himself much with struggles among the French, British, Danes, Dutch and Portuguese within India before it settled as a English possession; instead focus on efforts to conquer or defend it afterward. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt was intended to ultimately threaten India, and he gave some thought to other attempts after the Indian adventure failed – in alliance with Tsar Paul (1801) and Alexander I (1807). Paul actually sent a force toward India; it was recalled on his death, to the considerable relief of the participants. The later plan, with 50000 French troops marching through Persia to link up with a similar number of Alexander I’s Cossacks riding through Afghanistan never got beyond the armwaving stage.
      Still, the British couldn’t help but notice that Russia kept getting closer and closer to India – despite repeated denials that they were doing so. The initial moves came in the Caucasus, where Circassia, Daghestan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Erivan and Karabagh all rapidly or painfully fell to the Tsar. The British go involved on a “unofficial” level, with various adventurers showing up in the mountains to give advice to the tribes (at this time Constantinople was considered to be the Russian target, and the threat was not Cossacks riding into India but the Russian Black Sea fleet breaking out into the Mediterranean). Once the Caucasian tribes were “pacified” (which turned out to be less lasting than the Russians thought) the Tsar turned his attention to Central Asia, picking off the emirates of Khiva and Bokhara and the Turkmen fortress of Geok Tepe. In the meantime, British efforts alternated between a “forward” policy, which involved a military presence in Afghanistan, and “masterly inactivity”, which tried to keep Afghanistan neutral through bribes and manipulating whoever the ruler happened to be. In the meantime the Persians also got into the act, claiming and besieging (with Russian advisors and artillery) the Afghan city of Herat.
      When the “Forward” school was in the ascendancy, British activity in Afghanistan resulted in the disastrous First Afghan War (1839-1842), and the nearly disastrous Second Afghan War (1878-1881). In the interim, the “masterly inactivity” proponents sent various British explorers/agents into Persia, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, sometimes to persuade various rulers to remain neutral and sometimes just to see what was going on. Sometimes these ended with a hero’s welcome in England and a book explaining how the protagonist had wandered around disguised as a Muslim holy man or an Armenian horse trader; sometimes they ended less felicitously (as it happened with Captain Conolly and Colonel Stoddart). The Russians, of course, had their own heroes doing their own heroic things; although Hopkirk tells their stories as far as possible, they get less page space than the British, due to the language difference and the reluctance of Soviet historians to make heroes out of people who worked for the Tsars.
      As far as actual military conquest went, the Russians in Central Asia had an easier time of it than the British in Afghanistan; the terrain they had to deal with was barren and almost waterless but at least it was flat. The Russians also timed their moves to coincide with British setbacks and diversions elsewhere: the Afghan Wars, the Sepoy Mutiny, and the Mahdist Wars in Sudan all brought Russian pushes. The First Afghan War and the Sepoy Mutiny were especially beneficial to the Russians, as they could point to the defeat of British arms by natives (news of the First Afghan War reaching the Emir of Bokhara is what brought one the demise of the unfortunate Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly).
      Although the Russians got as far as Merv, a town claimed by Afghanistan, they never pushed any farther in that direction, shifting their emphasis further east into Xinjiang, the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, and stirring up trouble among tribal rulers on the border in Chitral and Hunza. The Wakhan Corridor, the “panhandle” of Afghanistan, was deliberately negotiated between Britain and Afghanistan to be a buffer between Indian and the Russian Empire; this was one of the few places where Russians and British actually confronted each other during the Great Game. In 1891 British explorer Frances Younghusband encountered a Russian Colonel Yanov inside what Younghusband thought was clearly Afghanistan. After some convivial discussion over diner, Yanov regretfully informed Younghusband that he was in Russian territory and would have to leave; in fact, he’d have to leave by the Chinese border, not the Indian one. Younghusband was more interested in information than confrontation and acquiesced; Yanov gave him a bear hug and thanked him for being so gentlemanly about it. The Russian Foreign Office later apologized for the incident, agreeing that Yanov had strayed into Afghan territory.
      The end of the Great Game – at least for the 20th century – came with the Russian defeat in the Russo-Japanese war. Now it was the Russians that were made to look bad by losing to an Asian power. Plus, of course, now they were allied with the English. There were some desultory attempts by the Kaiser to interest the Russians into an alliance but they came to nothing.
      The stories are fascinating; Hopkirk has some other works on Central Asia I’ll have to look into. As I side note I learned that “pundit” comes from the Sanskrit and originally meant “wise man”; during the Great Game it referred to Indians recruited by the British to go on surveying expeditions, often in hostile territory. They were outfitted with various “secret agent” gadgets – compasses hidden in walking sticks and chests with false bottoms to hide sextants. Hopkirk regrets that these men – some of whom lost their lives – have never had their stories told.
      One thing Hopkirk doesn’t speculate about is if the fears of the British were justified. There was all sorts of talk among the Russophobes about “Cossacks watering their horses in the Indus” but it seems extremely unlikely that a Russian army would have any success in trying to cross Afghanistan – especially in the light of subsequent developments.
      Good maps; photographs or other illustrations of the principal participants and locales. Extensively referenced although understandably somewhat short of things from the Russian side.
    • 5/5
      "Now I shall go far and far into the North, playing the Great Game"Rudyard Kipling, KimA sweeping historical account of the struggle between the English and Russians to map and control central Asia. I read this originally about 1992, and revisited it more recently after buying a new Folio Society edition. Very well written, as entertaining as a novel, telling stories of the Northwest Frontier, Tibet, and the Himalayas
    • 5/5
      Where to start with reading about Central Asia’s history? For me, I started with Peter Hopkirk, an accomplished historian who combines an extraordinary amount of knowledge with a writing style that makes you think that history is no more than a thrilling boy’s book, with good guys and bad guys and a seemingly endless stream of adventures. “The Great Game” (1990) is such a book, and its describes, mostly from a British point of view, the buildup of tension in the hitherto unmapped Himalayas, between the British, firmly established in India, and the Tsarist Russian expansion into Central Asia. Part of the adventure component of the book is the reconnaissance of British explorers into ever more remote parts of the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs, and to the Silk Road oasis towns of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva. If you ever needed proof that non-fiction is more exciting than fiction. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      Great read - Why do countries(politicians) keep doing the same stupid things over and over -Don't any of them read history books!! Great Britain and Russia fight over India Pakistan, Tibet, Persia, etc. China, Japan and Germany and others join the fray.
    • 5/5
      What a game the Great Game was. The British Empire versus the Russian Empire, fought in one of the most remote regions on Earth. The prize was power over Central Asia, mixed with annoying the loser. Reading "The Great Game", it seems the Russians won, although they faced some terrible losses of their own. With such a huge area and time to cover, the story needed an expert historian with a writing style that kept you turning the pages. Fortunately Peter Hopkirk filled both roles admirably and the 500-odd pages fairly raced by to its conclusion. Although I consider myself a geographical expert, it was lucky the book includes numerous maps as I regularly leafed back to them to workout where on earth was the desolate spot previously unknown to me that may well have sparked a nineteenth century war between Britain and Russia.Highly recommended and I'm working my way through Hopkirk's other books related to the Great Game.
    • 4/5
      A Ripping Yarn! With footnotes! I recommend this book to all adult survivors of Rudyard Kipling. The real story that fictional persons like Flashman palely imitate. this is the classical clash between the great land power, who had to add to her borders to feel safe, and the naval octopus, intent on maintaining its dividends. Geographical determinists like Mackinder are also dragged in, as well as games-playing theory. It is hard to put down...ah, where was I? Right...got to sign off on this review and do a re-read.
    • 3/5
      Far from exhaustive but certainly exhausting to read, this history of England and Russia skirmishing over who gets to be in charge of central Asia was fascinating. 500-odd pages and one only skims the surface. The sheer grit of the early explorers is astonishing- facing horrible conditions and alien cultures with the proverbial stiff upper lip. I learned a lot about the history of the area but came away thinking that nothing has changed even though the territory's been disputed forever. Same as it ever was...
    • 4/5
      Swashbucking adventure in Central Asia. And it's all real history! From the Pashtuns to the Mongols, from the British to the Czar. This book is a traveler's adventure.
    • 4/5
      I liked this a lot, although I think the relevance to events today has been overplayed a bit by some other reviewers: it's better enjoyed as a stirring history than a political primer.I knew a little about the Great Game before – that 19th-century wrangling over Central Asia between Britain and Russia – but I hadn't appreciated before how motivated both sides were, in Britain's case because they feared encroachment on their ‘jewel of the Empire’, British India, and in Russia's case because they were hell-bent on expanding their influence as far as possible. But the real joy here is in the Boy's-Own adventuring of some of the principal players – ambitious explorer-spies who headed off the map and into a world of mountain fortresses, Himalayan snowstorms, Russian ambushes, gruelling sieges, and daring gunfights. At stake was a barely-known network of independent city-states whose rulers were befriended, betrayed, and played off one another by the two major powers in an attempt to win influence and ascendancy in the area.It would take a hard-hearted reader not to feel some pangs of awe and excitement at some of the derring-do here, however much you are made aware of the cynical political game-playing behind it all. Hopkirk tells his story engagingly, if occasionally dropping into some speculative scene-setting (‘As he donned a long quilted coat and black lambskin hat, the two men with him watched in silence’ – how do you know?). There are narrative problems – it covers a long period, and the book is necessarily somewhat episodic, with rather little of the political background filled in – but on the whole, the episodes are so extraordinary that it's hard to mind too much.I'd be interested to see a update of some of this – when it came out the Soviet Union was still in place, and it would be good to know which previously-hidden records on the Russian side have now become available. Until then, it's a great primer on a fascinating period of imperial history.
    • 4/5
      This book should be required reading for all policy "wonks" who think that they can occupy, pacify or democratize Afghanistan. Hopkirk documents in a lively readable fashion: the frustrations and debacles over several centuries that Great Britain and Russia experienced in sparring to extend their hegemony over this area of few resources and many tribes. He examines this history of ineptitude primarily through the writings of various forward and passively oriented adventurers that explore the land for the two protaganists. Many are still buried there along with thousands of sepoy and cossacks that paid the heavy human cost for the many failed attempts at imperial expansion.
    • 4/5
      This was really good. History told as an adventure story, and broken down episodically in a way that flows well as narrative. Good use of historical figures as protagonists without straying too far over the line of objectivity. Still manages to step back and give a good view of the overall picture at appropriate intervals as well. All in all, a good way to learn a lot of history about a region and an era I knew little about before.
    • 4/5
      The original Cold War, this is a historical account of the game played Britain and Russia from the late 18th to the early 20th century, for supremacy of Central Asia. On the British side, at stake was the security of its source of wealth, India. On the Russian side, it was ostensibly new markets for its goods, but was actually a consolidation and expansion of empire. It is an extraordinary tale of adventure, great daring, intrigue, and warfare. Needing to secure India from the Russian threat by surrounding itself with friendly neighbors, with Afghan kingdoms and tribes on the west, and on the north across the mountain passes, Sikh as well as other local chiefdoms, Britain decided to adopt a low-key forward policy. Written from the point of view of the British, Hopkirk introduces us to some very interesting individuals, exemplary in their bravery (and sometimes necessarily, bravado) who took up the challenge of the unexplored territory and of the unknown. We travel with these men, and with countless of their Indian subjects, across some of the most hostile environments in the world even in the coldest of winter – the vast expanse of the steppes, the deserts, the highest and practically impassable mountain peaks, home to warring and some of the most fearsome tribes of Central Asia. They map out regions and impenetrable mountain passes, identifying pockets of areas the enemy could use in a possible invasion. They strike up relations with local chiefs, buying their loyalties with expensive gifts, gold, and money, and promises of military support against their enemies, and against Russia. With these men, we are awed by the splendor of the ancient cities of what we know today as Afghanistan and Pakistan and Iran, cities along the ancient Silk Road such as Bokhara, Samarkand, glimpses of which we still see today (unfortunately not anymore of Kabul). Many of these men would lose their lives in heroic ways, and many bloody battles fought because of treachery mostly on the part of the local tribes (we have to keep in mind though that this is a one-sided assessment, as the records are mainly from the British side) who, aware of their strategic value to either parties, were not above playing off Russia and Britain against each other with their loyalties. We are also given a picture of the directions and the lapses in the imperialist policies advocated by Britain in this region. Hopkirk writes in a very engaging way, and much happens that are stuff of imagination so that we almost forget that this is not a work of fiction. The Great Game “officially” ended a century ago, the main players never reached an actual war although they came dangerously close a few times. The Russian invasion of Afghanistan, however, many decades later in 1979, simply went to show that those in the British imperial government at the time of the Great Game were correct in their belief that one day the Russians would come (for another reason this time, of course, but the evidence is there that they still had an interest). An interesting, highly readable book that helps us understand a bit of the history of the region which today holds the most intractable of military and political challenges.
    • 4/5
      The period of Hopkirk's "Great Game" is mostly the 19th century with its imperial great power rivalry, in this case between Great Britain and Russia in what is now Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgystan. The context is one in which nationalist imperialism is popular, driven by a jingoistic press and military adventurism (particularly among the asian Russian commanders). They would duplicitously seize central asian khanates such as Khiva or Bokhara while the British would have military misadventures in Afghanistan and send "geographers" to map out mountain passes that the Russians could use to invade India. In the event, The Russians didn't invade British India although their military wanted to and planned it. When war looked like a real possibility, they backed down. They had internal problems and the British government was never ready to bear the cost of a war that British India couldn't meet.Reading this fascinating book showed me how different the 19th century European mindset was from the current one, something that Hopkirk brings out extremely well.
    • 4/5
      A Hard Book to Put Down, September 2, 2002By John Thomson (Indianapolis, IN USA) - See all my reviewsThe Great Game, by Peter Hopkirk, is an amazing history of British and Russian imperialism clashing in the Middle East and Asia. Encompassing the time period from the late eighteenth century to the very beginning of the twentieth, the Great Game was much like an enormous game of chess, with Russia seeking to expand its borders and Britain to safeguard its interests in India. Hopkirk reveals both the national policy thoughts of the two nations and the daring moves of each's officers and agents in the regions in question, which include most of Central Asia, Afghanistan, India and the Caucasus. In many cases, the men Hopkirk describes were the first Westerners to set foot in such regions (for example, Bokhara, Khotan and Khokand).Hopkirk has done incredible research: his bibliography is an impressive 15 pages. And even though he has a wealth of material to cover, he makes sure that the whole presentation is interesting to the reader. He tells a complete story, but expands on issues and events that are both important and interesting. As a result, the exploits of men like Conolly, Stoddart and Burnes come into clear focus against a backdrop of intrigue and, often, duplicitous ness, across a little over 500 pages.Not unexpectedly, Hopkirk's account tends to be favor the British point of view slightly. Even so, he's quick to point out mistakes and torpedo unjustified accusations on both sides.I found this book an easy and quick read, completing it in across about four days. While it progresses in roughly chronological sequence, it could easily be read piecemeal if the reader desired. The book kept my interest well, and didn't ever seem to wander aimlessly. I must believe that this is the authoritative account of the subject, and I can recommend it unconditionally, whether this is a subject area of interest for you, or you just want an interesting book to occupy your time.Interestingly, the end of the Soviet Union has refocused the spotlight on many regions discussed in this book. If you find that you remain interested in the topic after reading it, I recommend following up with Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy MacLean or Journey to Khiva by Phillip Glazebrook.
    • 4/5
      If good writing is taking "real" history and making it read so that you can't put the book down AND remember some percent of the facts, this guys is a good writer.
    • 5/5
      History as gripping adventure. Hopkirk succeeds in reclaiming an obscure corner of Imperial history all for himself. One of these best examples of narrative-history-as-a-story you are likely to find.