Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across Northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron undertakes a journey along the greatest land route on earth: the Silk Road. Travelling 7,000 miles in eight months, he traces the passage not only of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions. With a gift for talking to others, and of getting them to talk to him...
Lorna Doone is one of the greatest love stories ever written; and for a long time, it was the most popular. Written in the heyday of the great Victorian novelists, in 1869, it proved to be an enduring tale and made its author rich and famous. This is the story of John Ridd, a yeoman farmer of the border country in southwest England. Set in the turbulent late 17th century, amid political tensions aroused by the...