Across The Roof Of The World by Wilfred Skrede

Across The Roof Of The World by Wilfred Skrede lands on the shelves of my shop.

The Travel Book Club, 1954, Hardback in dust wrapper.

Illustrated by way of: Black & White Photographs; Maps to the endpapers and blanks;

From the cover: A lone figure wandering in the vastness of Asia, Wilfred Skrede, a young Norwegian, saw many strange things which few from the West have ever seen.

He was no explorer accompanied by the equipment and porters of a great expedition, but a young man in wartime making his way as best he could to Little Norway in Canada across Russia and Turkestan, over the Himalayas, on to India and from there to Singapore and around the Cape of Good Hope.

Crippled and exhausted, but with mind alert, he journeyed along the tracks where once thundered the hordes of Ghenghis Khan and where centuries ago slowly moved the caravans on the route from far Cathay. In the Mintaka Pass, high in the Himalayas, his only signposts were the skeletons of men and innumerable horses that had perished along the way, their powdering bones vanishing in the winds of Time

Skrede was truly a man from another world treated often with hostility, indifference, even brutality and sometimes with unexpected kindness by people whose language he could not speak. Through every adventure and he had many his youthful resilience enabled him to laugh at himself, his sense of humour helped him to see hope where others might have seen none, but even he, with youth and hope on his side, was sometimes overwhelmed by unbearable loneliness. The miracle is that he ever survived to tell his story.

Good in Poor Dust Wrapper. Unlaminated dust wrapper a little edgeworn and faded with several short tears and a little loss. Gently bruised at the head, tail and corners of the binding. Pages lightly age-tanned.

Green boards with Black titling to the Spine. 255 pages. 8″ x 5¼”.

Of course, if you don’t like this one there are plenty more available here!

Black Elephant Hunter by Kevin Duffy

Black Elephant Hunter by Kevin Duffy lands on the shelves of my shop.

The Travel Book Club, 1960, Hardback in dust wrapper.

Illustrated by way of: Maps [1];

From the cover: Black Elephant Hunter is an authentic account of elephant hunting in the Luangwa Valley, Northern Rhodesia, where the author, a young Dubliner, went on safari to record on cine film the tracking and final dispatch of a bull elephant by a black hunter named Yose, armed with an ancient muzzle-loader.

Black Elephant Hunter is an unusual story which creates, a unique picture of this vast and largely unexplored tract of the African Continent.

Very Good in Good Dust Wrapper. Unlaminated dust wrapper a little edgeworn and faded with a nick to the foot of the upper panel and fraying to the foot of the spine. Leans slightly. Text complete, clean and tight.

Green boards with Black titling to the Spine. 208 pages. 8″ x 5¼”.

Of course, if you don’t like this one there are plenty more available here!

Shooting Leave: Spying Out Central Asia in the Great Game by John Ure

Shooting Leave: Spying Out Central Asia in the Great Game by John Ure lands on the shelves of my shop.

Constable, 2009, Hardback in dust wrapper.

Illustrated by way of: Black & White Drawings; Maps to the endpapers and blanks;

From the cover: Snow leopards and Cossacks can both be dangerous. But for young British officers in the mountains and steppes of Central Asia in the nineteenth century, the most excitement came from spying out those uncharted lands and impeding Tsarist Russias advance towards the frontiers of the British Raj. When both sporting and spying activities combined known euphemistically as shooting leave adventures followed thick and fast.

John Ure tells the thrilling story of the dashing cavalry officers who volunteered for these adventures individuals of talent and courage as well as disturbing prejudice, aristocratic arrogance, missionary zeal and trigger-happy temperament. But whatever their specific task, one factor remained common to officers sent out on covert and exploratory missions: they were expendable. Here they are brought to life as characters in their own right as well as players in the Great Game; the real stories behind the phantom worlds of Kipling, John Buchans heroes and Flashmans villains.

Very Good in Very Good Dust Wrapper.

Red boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. [XXVII] 275 pages. Bibliography. 8¾” x 5½”.

Of course, if you don’t like this one there are plenty more available here!

The Final Link: A Pictorial History of the Great Western & Great Central Joint Line by Dennis Edwards & Ron Pigram

The Final Link: A Pictorial History of the Great Western & Great Central Joint Line by Dennis Edwards & Ron Pigram lands on the shelves of my shop.

Bloomsbury Books, 1988, Hardback in dust wrapper.

Illustrated by way of: Black & White Photographs; Facsimiles; Maps to the endpapers and blanks;

From the cover: Probably nowhere other than in the heady patriotic atmosphere of England in the dying years of the Victorian Age could such an expensive and unnecessary venture in railway building have taken place. Another link between London and Birmingham, that was to prove the very last steam main line railway built in England, had little sound financial logic in the dawn of the motor age. There was a Late Imperial flavour about the whole affair.

It was spawned by the powerful Great Western Railways wish for a more direct line between London and Birmingham to gain additional traffic, and the Great Central Railways difficulty in working high-speed trains into its new London terminus, via Aylesbury and Harrow, because of its argument with the Metropolitan Railway.

The Joint Line was to help the spread of London and to bring a promise of industry, as well as promoting trade in a very rural part of England. But these were the sunset years of Britains great Railway Age.

It was already too late

Very Good in Very Good Dust Wrapper. Price Clipped. Previous owners’ inscription to the first blank.

Green boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. 144 pages. 12″ x 8½”.

Of course, if you don’t like this one there are plenty more available here!