Sarah Searight

Fairly competent account of the development of steamship and railway routes between Europe and India during the nineteenth century, focussing on their role in the "Great Game".

A reliable rule when dealing with railway history is to avoid anything that opens with Fanny Kemble's account of riding on the footplate with George Stephenson. This book manages to bring her in three times in half a dozen pages, and the opening chapter carries on its triumphant progress through the most overworked trivia of railway history by quoting Ruskin (out of context) on the Buxton to Bakewell line and telling us about the death of William Huskisson. Ouch!

Searight doesn't seem to be either an engineer or a historian by trade, but she clearly does know her way around the middle East and central Asia. Some of her explanations of the technical background come out rather confused. She can write very well when she wants to, but the book is sadly littered with repetitions, mixed metaphors, clichés, and similar signs of poor editing. Despite these limitations, the style is usually lively, and it's probably worth a read for the touches of insight that go along with Searight's first-hand knowledge of the places she's writing about.… (more)