On Horseback through, Asia Minor, by Captain Francis Burnaby (Oxford, £6.99 in, UK)

Burnaby, a Harrow educated cavalryman, was a"noted Victorian daredevil, a gifted linguist and also famous for his size (six foot four) and sheer strength. His famous 1,000 mile ride was taken in 1876, with a single servant, setting out from Constantinople and heading east his official purpose was to assess Turkish powers of resistance in the Sultan's imminent war against "Russia. His obstacles were's many, including ice and snow as well as hostile tribesmen, but Burnaby was an excellent raconteur and observer recording sights, conversations and customs which must have been as strange to his public back home in Britain as the landscape of Mars is to us. There is an introduction by Peter Hopkirk.