"The Road to Oxiana has been called the seminal travel book of the 20th century. Witty, lyrical, erudite, combative, it still strikes the reader with a vivid contemporary immediacy. Composed in the form of a random diary, its deceptively conversational tone was, of course, the result of meticulous craft. Spiky character sketches and farcical conversations (replete with musical notation) are interlaced with news clippings, scholarly digressions and some of the most precise and beautiful architectural descriptions in the language. This eclectic technique, moving at will between aesthetic refinement and anecdotal absurdity, has ensured the book's appeal into a later age. Travel writers as diverse as Bruce Chatwin and Jonathan Raban have esteemed it; the critic Paul Fussell acclaimed it as the Ulysses and The Waste Land of travel writing." (The Guardian)

ISBN: 0 14 144209 3

Read reviews

Robert Byron, author of the celebrated "Road to Oxiana", took a trip to Mount Athos with two Oxford friends at the age of 22 and wrote this classic account of its treasures and men.

ISBN: 1 84212 208 8

Less well-known than his travel writings is that like many of his generation Robert Byron was a wonderfully entertaining letter writer.

ISBN: 0 7195 4921 3

An historical perspective AD330-1453

ISBN: 0 7102 1392 1

First published in 1933, this text is an account of Robert Byron's travels in Russia, India and Tibet.

ISBN: 0 14 009519 5