Europe in the Looking Glass (20 page)

Robert Byron was born in Wembley in 1905. He was educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, from which he was sent down with a third class degree for his persistently unruly behaviour. In 1925 he embarked with two friends on a car journey to Athens, a trip he would detail in his first book
Europe in the Looking Glass
(1926). In 1929 Byron became a correspondent for
The Daily Express
, and in 1933 published
First Russia, Then Tibet
based on his experiences of travel those countries.

It was also in 1933 that Byron set off on a ten-month trip across the Middle East and South Asia with his close friend Christopher Sykes. The resultant book
The Road to Oxiana
(1937) is considered to be not only Byron’s finest, but one of the pre-eminent works of travel-writing in the English language. It was to be Byron’s last major work. By the time he returned to Britain in 1936 the clouds of war were already gathering. He attended the 1938 Nuremberg Rally with Unity Mitford out of interest, but was no admirer of Nazism, which he described as ‘intellectual and spiritual death’.

In February 1941 Byron was on board the SS
Jonathan Holt
when it was torpedoed in the North Atlantic en route to Cairo. Although officially a special correspondent for the BBC’s Overseas News Department, rumours persist that he was involved in espionage on behalf of the Allied war effort. Byron was among fifty-two passengers and crew members lost; his body was never recovered.

Jan Morris was born in Somerset in 1926, living and writing under the name James Morris until undergoing sex reassignment surgery in 1972. Morris was educated at Lancing College and Christ Church College, Oxford. Having served in the Second World War, Morris became a foreign correspondent and was the first journalist to report the success of the 1953 British expedition to climb Mount Everest. She has published over forty books on a variety of subjects, and now lives in Wales.