Hoping For A Hat-Trick

I RECENTLY finished reading another great find in a charity shop, Peter Fleming's News From Tartary.

If the author's name sounds vaguely familiar, it is because he was the elder brother of James Bond writer Ian Fleming.

£2.25 from a branch (cannot recall which) of Oxfam

The book tells of Times correspondent Peter Fleming's 3,500-mile journey in 1935 from Peking, as the Chinese city was then known in the West, to Kashmir, accompanied by a female Swiss travel writer-photographer.

Fleming's account is very much a piece of travel writing, but the region they passed through was experiencing turbulent times, not least thanks to what was then a confident Soviet Union and its agents, so there is plenty to interest anyone with an interest in (recent) history.

I enjoyed the book so much that writing this mini-review has prompted me to order two more Fleming travel books via Amazon: Brazilian Adventure, about his part in searching for a missing British adventurer, and One's Company, Fleming's account of traveling to China for The Times.

They have cost me rather more than £2.25, but I have high hopes of another two enjoyable reads.