Stop What You’re Doing and Read…On a Journey: The Worst Journey in the World & The Road to Oxiana

Robert Byron was born in England in 1905 into a family distantly related to Lord Byron. He attended Eton and Merton College, Oxford, and wrote several other travel books before his untimely death in 1941 when his ship to West Africa was torpedoed while serving as a correspondent for a London newspaper during World War II. Among his other books are The Station (1928), The Byzantine Achievement (1929), and First Russia, Then Tibet (1933).Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) was one of the youngest members of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic which he joined to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. After the expedition, Cherry-Garrard served in the First World War and was invalided home. With the zealous encouragement of his neighbour, George Bernard Shaw, Cherry-Garrard wrote The Worst Journey in the World (1922) in an attempt to overcome the horror of the journey. As the years unravelled he faced a terrible struggle against depression, breakdown and despair, haunted by the possibility that he could have saved Scott and his companions.

"THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD - Probably the best adventure yarn ever published" Independent "THE ROAD TO OXIANA - A writer of breathtaking prose - prose whose sensuous, chiselled beauty has cast its spell on English travel writing ever since" -- William Dalrymple