Mission to Tashkent

Bailey, Lt-Col F[rederick] M[arshman]

Beschreibung

Jonathan Cape, London, 1946, first edition; 8vo, 140mm x 204mm; pp 312; frontispiece and 22 further plates from photographs by the author; folding map of the route to Tashkent and another map of the area around the city; red clot titled gilt on the spine, there a little dulled, and with the English title in Cyrillic script gilt on the front cover; lacks the front free end paper, corners very slightly bumped but o verall clean and in good condition. . . . . . Bailey was onn the Younghusband expedition to Tibet in 1903 and later spent many years travelling throughout the North West Frontier areas and the countries of the Roof of the World, the high regions of central Asia comprising the Pamirs, the Himalayas, the Tibet, or Himalayan, Plateau, the Tian Shan and the Altai mountains. In 1918, following the Russian revolutions, he went on a political mission to Tashkent, the largest city in the Emirate of Bukhara and later to become the capital of Uzbekistan, to seek to identify Soviet intentions in the area and understand the activities of the various agents of the Central Powers operating there. In particuarly he learned of the activities of the Indian nationalist Raja Mahendra Pratap who was liaising with Germany and Russi seeking to have launched a German-Soviet assault from Afghanistan into India. He eventually had to flee for his life from the city, disguised as a prisoner-of-war and in a surrealist twist was recruited by the Cheka (the first of a long line of Russian secret service organisations) to track down a rogue British agent understood to be operating in the area, himself. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 001148

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Mission to Tashkent

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Good