A Talisman

I have just reread Bruce Chatwin's introduction to Robert Byron's "Road to Oxiana". Becky gave it to me as, in her words, "the bible of travel writing". I have heroically ploughed through it but the effort is being rewarded. It trully is an inspiring book. Not just because of the efforts that he (Byron) must have exerted to reach Persia and Afghanistan in the 1930's but also his insightful writing as he described what he saw and felt.

Chatwin followed in his footsteps in the 1950/60's before the area was 'discovered' and comments on our Western folly in trying to impose our ways on a proud people. So many of us are like the former Shah of Iran (his father was in power in Byron's time - and he acted just the same) believing our own myths. That I think is part of the cause of the recent UK riots in a society where hubris rules and those in power and particularly business,  lose contact with everyday people around them. They mistake luck for ability and convicne themselves that they are deserving of the rich rewards they demand and their colleagues conive to èay them .Byron, by contrast, sought out real genius (in his field of historical architecture) and put the run of the mill examples in their place

Then he died when his ship bound for West Africa was torpedoed in 1941 but he left behind a literary masterpiece and words of truth. That we all could.