Colin Thubron
Author of Shadow of the Silk Road
About the Author
Colin Thubron is the prizewinning, bestselling author of several travel books.
Series
Works by Colin Thubron
??? 1 copy
Associated Works
The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos (2013) — Editor & Introduction, some editions — 790 copies, 19 reviews
Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition of 1761-1767 (1962) — Introduction, some editions — 390 copies, 10 reviews
The Company They Kept, Volume Two: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships (2011) — Contributor — 25 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Thubron, Colin Gerald Dryden
- Birthdate
- 1939-06-14
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Eton College
- Occupations
- novelist
travel writer
documentary filmmaker - Organizations
- Royal Society of Literature (President, 2010- )
- Awards and honors
- Order of the British Empire (Commander, 2006)
Royal Scottish Geographical Society Mungo Park Medal (2000)
Royal Society for Asian Affairs Lawrence of Arabia Medal (2001)
Royal Society of Literature (Fellow, 1969) - Relationships
- Grazia, Margreta de (wife)
- Short biography
- Colin Thubron was born in London on 14 June 1939. Educated at Eton College, he worked briefly for the publishers Hutchinson and as a freelance television film-maker in Turkey, Japan and Morocco. His first book, Mirror to Damascus, was published in 1967. He continued to write about the Middle East in The Hills of Adonis: A Quest in Lebanon (1968) and Jerusalem (1969).
Among the Russians (1983) describes a journey he made by car through western Russia during the Brezhnev era. Behind the Wall: A Journey through China (1987) won both the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. The Lost Heart of Asia (1994) narrates his travels through the newly-independent central Asian republics, exploring the effects of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the region. He returned to Russia for his most recent travel narrative, In Siberia (1999).
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 1969, Colin Thubron is a regular contributor and reviewer for magazines and newspapers including The Times, the Times Literary Supplement and The Spectator. He lives in London. His latest travel books are Shadows of the Silk Road (2006), an account of his 7,000-mile journey along the route of the Silk Road; and To a Mountain in Tibet (2011), about his pilgrimage to sacred Mount Kailas. - Nationality
- England
UK - Birthplace
- London, England, UK
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
- Map Location
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
In the summers of 2018 and 2019, heading towards his eightieth birthday, Thubron followed the Amur from its source in Mongolia (where it's called the Onon) all the way to Nikolaevsk where it enters the Sea of Okhotsk. When Chekhov travelled to the Russian Far East in 1890, the passage down the Amur in a steamship was the only relaxed and comfortable part of his journey, and he gets positively lyrical in his descriptions of the scenery. Thubron's experience is rather different: the opening of show more the Trans-Siberian Railway killed the river traffic on the lower Amur (Vladivostok is a much more sensible place for a port than Nikolaevsk), and border tensions between the USSR and China have also kept its upper reaches off-limits for much of the 20th century.
Thubron starts off on horseback in the hills of Mongolia, in a protected region thought to contain the secret burial site of Genghis Khan, and we're only a couple of pages in when he has his second fall, injuring himself and obviously starting to wonder whether he really needs this kind of adventure at his age. But he sticks to it, and finds the source, which like most sources of great rivers is not exactly spectacular.
From there he goes on, cadging lifts with Buddhist monks, hiring taxis or taking local buses or ferries, into Siberia and then over the river to the Chinese side for a while downstream from Heihe, then back to the Russian side at Khabarovsk. As usual, his main interest is in talking to people along the way and finding out how they relate to the place they are living in and its history, and that's something he's very good at: he clearly manages to have interesting conversations even with people most of us would steer well clear of, like the ex-mercenary sturgeon poachers who guide him on the lower river, and gives us what seems to be a fair representation of their point of view.
Great travel writing, and a very interesting look at a part of the world I didn't know much about. show less
Thubron starts off on horseback in the hills of Mongolia, in a protected region thought to contain the secret burial site of Genghis Khan, and we're only a couple of pages in when he has his second fall, injuring himself and obviously starting to wonder whether he really needs this kind of adventure at his age. But he sticks to it, and finds the source, which like most sources of great rivers is not exactly spectacular.
From there he goes on, cadging lifts with Buddhist monks, hiring taxis or taking local buses or ferries, into Siberia and then over the river to the Chinese side for a while downstream from Heihe, then back to the Russian side at Khabarovsk. As usual, his main interest is in talking to people along the way and finding out how they relate to the place they are living in and its history, and that's something he's very good at: he clearly manages to have interesting conversations even with people most of us would steer well clear of, like the ex-mercenary sturgeon poachers who guide him on the lower river, and gives us what seems to be a fair representation of their point of view.
Great travel writing, and a very interesting look at a part of the world I didn't know much about. show less
This is, on one level, a trek to Mount Kailas, a sacred mountain in Tibet. It is also, although not overtly, a journey into the soul. The author has experienced the loss of his sister, when young, and now both parents, such that he is alone in the world. He undertakes the journey to circumnavigate Mt Kailas, which is scared to Buddhists and Hindus. To do so in not a light undertaking and the trek to just the foot of the mountain is hard going. He describes it all in some detail, and is, at show more times, unsparing in his descriptions. There is poverty here, but there is also something soul enhancing. Even for a non-believer, he experiences something over and above the travel in this trek. The details of the journey are well described, the history, background, geology and political turmoil all feature. It is when he is meditating on his fellow humanity and the act of memory that he is at his most human. show less
Another sterling publication from Time-Life Books in their Great Cities series, although this one is quite dated, 1978. But Colin Thubron's scintillating prose makes up to a great extent for its vintage; in keeping with his other works, he approaches the city from the ground level, so to speak, observing the condition and activities of the common people on the streets, rather that conferring with the captains of industry or the political bigwigs. So inevitably, the decrepit condition of the show more streets and buildings, the crumbling infrastructure, the challenges of living with poor levels of basic services, and the dogged spirit of the people, are what come to the attention. In a way, this probably represents more than anything the reaction of a Westerner (and a non-Muslim, to boot), as the nostalgia for the lost world of Christian Constantinople comes forth strongly. A Muslim writer would probably see in the massive mosques and palaces the confirmation of the glory of his faith; the Christian, however, feels the pang of the seat of Orthodox patriarch reduced to a vestige, the few remaining churches and synagogues with almost no attendance, the gradual emigration of the many ethnic communities like the Jews, the Armenians, the Greeks, and others, the relegation of Sancta Sophia to a museum (and now, with the Islamic revival, back to a mosque in use). In turn, ethnic Turks have come in from the Asian mainland, and the 'European' stock of the local populace (descenced largely from the Christian captives imported under the Ottoman regime) correspondingly decreases. Of course, 45 years down the timeline, one expects that the city would have been refurbished, with broad avenues and shining malls and high-rise buildings; we need to compare the current conditions. show less
It is a privilege to go on a journey with Colin Thubron. Thubron is not only extremely well-versed in local history and culture, but he has a knack for languages as well. I knew the author spoke fluent Russian from reading "In Siberia" only to discover that he speaks enough Mandarin to make himself understood most of the time during his travels in China. The best part about this book and other Thubron travel books is when he is actually traveling. His descriptions are precise. His casual show more encounters with ordinary people are interesting, particularly when he arrives in Iran toward the end of his trip. Occasionally, the book bogs down when Thubron digresses into one of the many historical anecdotes. While I cannot help but be mpressed by the author's knowledge and research, I often found these passages frustrating because they were often too long and detailed (and some too obscure to be of general interest) that they detracted from the journey itself. Thubron has clearly established himself as one of the leading contemporary writers of travel literature, but I couldn't help but think that that reputation may have cowed his editors into allowing long weary passages slip by. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 31
- Also by
- 13
- Members
- 6,925
- Popularity
- #3,529
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 118
- ISBNs
- 315
- Languages
- 11
- Favorited
- 17
