Tag Archives: Fred Burnaby

If Louis Blake Duff is to be believed, Colonel Frederick Gustavus Burnaby ‘missed by a hair’s breadth getting into the main channels of history’.   This is short-sighted and Dr John W. Hawkins’ impressive new book well and truly rebukes the notion. It would be fair to say that, like many figures celebrated in their time through a grasp of the zeitgeist …

The incomparable Colonel Frederick Gustavus Burnaby (1842-1885) In 1876 Fred Burnaby returned from an epic winter-ride on horseback and by sledge to the Khanate of Khiva, in the heart of central Asia. His book, A Ride to Khiva, was an instant hit and ran to eleven editions in the space of a year. On Horseback through Asia Minor, written after …