In 1933 Robert Byron began a journey through the Middle East via Beirut, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Teheran to Oxiana--the country of the Oxus, the ancient name for the river Amu Darya which forms part of the border between Afghanistan and 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.

To mark the publication of Stop What You're Doing and Read This!, a collection of essays celebrating reading, Vintage Classics are releasing 12 limited edition themed ebook 'bundles', to tempt readers to discover and rediscover great books.THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLDINTRODUCED BY SARA WHEELERA gripping account of an expedition gone disastrously wrong. One of the youngest members of Captain Scott's team, Apsley Cherry-Garrard was later part...

The Road to Oxiana is a travelogue by Robert Byron, first published in 1937. It is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. The word "Oxiana" in the title refers to the region along Afghanistan's northern border.Writer Paul Fussell wrote that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry."Robert Byron (1905 – 1941) was a British travel writer, best...

The Road to Oxiana is the brilliant account of Robert Byron’s ten-month journey to Iran and Afghanistan in 1933–34. This classic travelogue is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing.

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 had yet to begin. Having taken the first commercial flight to India, which took an astounding seven days, Byron was thrown into the tumultuous last years of the British Raj. Gandhi was imprisoned, while rioting and clashes between H...

A travel writing classic ready to be rediscovered, Europe in the Looking Glass describes, with a mixture of laugh-out-loud humour and perceptive commentary on art and architecture, how three rich young Englishmen cross pre-World-War-Two Europe in an old car. Best known as the author of The Road to Oxiana, published in 1937, Robert Byron developed his considerable writing skills on a travel book which has not been in print since 1926. Europe in the Looking Glass describes a journey Byron ma...

Robert Byron (1905-1941) was a famous British travel writer. Byron died at the young age of 35 when the ship he was travelling on was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. This edition of Byron’s The Road to Oxiana includes a table of contents.

Robert Byron (1905-1941) was a famous British travel writer. Byron died at the young age of 35 when the ship he was travelling on was torpedoed by a German U-Boat. This edition of The Travelogues of Robert Byron includes a table of contents for the following:The Road to OxianaThe Station: Travels to the Holy Mountain of GreeceThe Byzantine AchievementFirst Russia, Then Tibet

Robert Byron's The Station is a vivid early travel narrative centered on Mount Athos, the monastic peninsula where Byzantine Christianity, art, and ritual survived with extraordinary intensity. Combining itinerary, aesthetic manifesto, and comic observation, the book moves through monasteries, landscapes, icons, libraries, and conversations with monks. Its prose is brisk, ironic, and visually exact, already displaying Byron's gift for architectural description and his challenge to the West...

First published in 1926 by George Routledge and Sons: London, now public domain. In 1925, after being kicked out of Oxford University for “misdemeanors” and mooching aimlessly around London, Robert Byron and two friends left for the Continent. As with his famous namesake before him, this would be a Grand Tour, but one done by car. Byron’s wry and informative account languished out of print for almost a hundred years. Now it has been rescued and republished, enabling us to rediscover Byron ...

First published in 1929, The Byzantine Achievement is Robert Byron's ardent reappraisal of a culture long caricatured in English letters. Blending art history, cultural polemic, and the eyewitness verve of a traveler, he follows the thread from late antiquity to the Renaissance, showing how Byzantine theology, aesthetics, and governance sustained and fertilized Europe. With lapidary description of Hagia Sophia, Ravenna's mosaics, and the severe poise of icons, Byron overturns the cliché of...

In The Byzantine Achievement, Robert Byron offers a vigorous reassessment of Byzantium as a creative civilization rather than a decadent afterlife of Rome. Combining historical interpretation with an eye trained by architecture and travel, he surveys Byzantine religion, political culture, art, and imperial continuity, emphasizing the empire's formative role in preserving classical inheritance and shaping medieval Christendom. Written in lucid, polemical prose, the book belongs to the early...