Mihr ‘Ali (attrib.), Fath ‘Ali Shāh at the Hunt with Twenty-two Sons, c.1810

New Delhi, The President's Secretariat, Rashtrapati Bhavan

Image here via https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fath_Ali_(1797-1833)_and_his_twenty-two_sons,_gift_to_King_George_IV_of_England,_Rashtrapati_Bhavan.jpg

Asia is big. Very big. The largest continent. It confounds and perplexes many Europeans even today. Our tiny world, with its dozens of countries, cultures, and languages, would all fit comfortably into modern-day Kazakhstan! 

And yet visitors from the West there always were. Starting in the Tudor age, with the first English merchants trying to find a way past Hanseatic blockades into the land of Muscovy, all the way to the Great Game of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, during which British and Russian empires eyed one another suspiciously over vast swathes of Central Asia... the West has been fascinated by Asia – and, frankly, by the riches it might offer. 

On this course, we will follow the Cossacks into Siberia, watch the Persian army be trained by an Elizabeth aristocrat, and travel with the Jesuits into China and the locked land of Tibet.

Every week’s session will be its own travelogue and thriller!

7 weeks, Friday 26 September - Friday 14 November (incl., with an early “half-term” break on 10 October).

RJW F2527

Registration: £90 per person

NB As there are additional costs entailed in running this course, please complete your registration with payment within 14 days of booking. Payment is via BACS or cheque (details for which will be sent when we receive your booking).

Should the course not attract sufficient interest to run, we’ll contact all who have registered, and full refunds will be issued.

If you have not registered beforehand and want to turn up and pay on the first session, please be aware that the course will not run if there are not enough registrations to render it feasible. You are, of course, very welcome to decide at the last minute, but do please be sure to contact us before making any plans or journeys, to check that it is indeed taking place.