Peter Hopkirk

For nearly a century, the two most powerful nations on earth—Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia—fought a secret war in the lonely passes and deserts of Central Asia. Those engaged in this shadowy struggle called it The Great Game, a phrase immortalised in Kipling's Kim. When play first began, the two rival empires lay nearly 2,000 miles apart. By the end,...

The Silk Road, which linked imperial Rome and distant China, was once the greatest thoroughfare on earth. Along it travelled precious cargoes of silk, gold and ivory, as well as revolutionary new ideas. Its oasis towns blossomed into thriving centres of Buddhist art and learning. In time it began to decline. The traffic slowed, the merchants left and finally its...

Under the banner of a Holy War, masterminded in Berlin and unleashed from Constantinople, the Germans and the Turks set out in 1914 to foment violent revolutionary uprisings against the British in India and the Russians in Central Asia. It was a new and more sinister version of the old Great Game, with world domination as its ultimate aim. Here,...