I found myself reading late into the morning, at times I couldn't put the book down. Most of the time I had heard of the places and people involved but a lot of this story was new to me. The narrative read like a novel, gripping but informative, never boring and full of information, breathing life into history in a way that is hard to find now-a-days. Peter Hopkirk began as a British journalist & spent considerable time on assignment in far-off locales that constituted the "Great Game", across today's Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, west & north into the Caucasus countries & Iran, landscapes that demanded a sense of adventure, with the author gradually becoming fascinated with the locations he was sent to, the concept of the Great Game& an abiding interest in Kipling's fictional portrayal of that phase of history in his amazing novel Kim. There is also mention of John Buchan's now little-known novel, The Half-Hearted detailing this era.

The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (US title The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia is a book by Peter Hopkirk on " the Great Game", a series of conflicts in the 1800s between the UK and Russian powers to control Central Asia. What is crippling in this book is that Hopkirk fails to see this period with a modern eye. While it isn't necessary that all periods of history should be critically re-looked at, Hopkirk does a serious misjudgment here, because this book serves as a salve to Western readers who still think that Europeans "did a jolly good job" with their Empires (as is evident in this book's popularity, right here on Goodreads). It also doesn't help that Peter Hopkirk unabashedly hero worships questionable characters such as Alexander Burnes who are directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths, rape and imprisonment of thousands. Hopkirk travelled widely over many years in the regions where his six books are set – Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and eastern Turkey. In 1236 Mongol horsemen swept westward through Russia, tying serfs to the Tartar yoke. The Golden Horde would exact tribute until Ivan the Terrible had defeated the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan in the mid 1500's, opening the way for expansion east through Siberia. Peter the Great turned his gaze south, through the Caucasus and Caspian towards Persia, yet was thwarted by Nader Shah in 1735. In 1757 the British began major territorial gains in India. The aspirations and apprehensions of these rival European empires became the 'Great Game', played out over Central Asia during the 1800's. There are so many details missing. Nationalism and religion continue to render Europeans, especially their military as automatically to be resisted. In many of these cultures, raiding remains a part of what people do. Complete with family owned and handed down ambush positions. Villages can be situated so as to control entrance/exit for military purposes, even at the cost of commercial traffic.

First thoughts: Am halfway through listening to this (i.e., about 8 hours in), but as excellent as the whole thing is, am going to take a little break. Like a good action movie, there is a lot of exciting plot offset with the occasional big "set piece," which at this point is the First Anglo-Afghan War which ended in the disastrous 1842 Retreat from Kabul...and I am frankly exhausted. Time for something a little lighter, before I get into Part II... Come tutti i principi afghani, Dost Mohammed era stato istruito sin dall'infanzia nelle arti dell'intrigo e del tradimento. A ciò si aggiungeva un talento naturale, ereditato dalla madre persiana, per le sottigliezze. Across snow-capped peaks, mountain ranges & great deserts the British & Russian forces seemed to play a costly, deadly game that ultimately ended in a kind of stalemate that came at last with the fall of the Russian Czar. However, on so very many occasions what some have termed the "melting pot of history" also became its vast graveyard, with young men from both major Great Game contestants "dying while filthy, half-starved & lice-ridden, so very far from their beloved homes". Covering a time period right from the 16th Century, when the Russians slowly started expanding eastwards and came in conflict first with the Central Asian Khanates, then with the British Raj in the 19th Century, the book finishes with the Great Game's own end in the beginning of the 20th Century when Japan beat the Russian Empire. Hopkirk does a decent job of covering such a massive time span without getting too technical and boring his readers.

Peter Hopkirk's The Great Game first appeared in 1990 & stands as a very interesting, well-researched book, written with a journalist's eye for detail. I recommend it, as well as another of Hopkirk's books, Quest For Kim, an excellent companion to Kipling's novel. First things first, it is an engaging read, with just the correct amount of detail and narrative punch. As with all of Hopkirk's books, I learned a lot about not only historical events of which I had little prior knowledge, but also how they linked together. I'd heard of Chitral before, but had no idea what exactly it was or how it played into the overall Great Game picture/chronology. And I had also never realized that the Russo-Japanese War was happening just as Frank Younghusband was rolling into Lhasa, and how Russia's loss there played a part in turning England's mood against the Tibetan "mission," since it helped point out that the greater future threat to Britain came not from Moscow, but from Germany; and when THAT fight began, they were going to need Russia as an ally, not an enemy. (And for that story, see Hopkirk's next book, Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire.)

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His works have been officially translated into fourteen languages, and unofficial versions in local languages are apt to appear in the bazaars of Central Asia. In 1999, he was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writing and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.[3] much of his research came from the India Office archives, British Library, St Pancras. L’impero britannico e l’impero russo vi si fronteggiarono instancabilmente senza mai arrivare allo scontro diretto (benché in un paio di occasioni vi giunsero alquanto vicino…) ma sfruttando, come in una scacchiera o un risiko grande come l’intero continente asiatico, gli stati e staterelli interposti come cuscinetto: regni, emirati, canati (territori governati da un Khan) coinvolti in un vortice di alleanze, tradimenti, accordi labili come fili d’erba, donazioni, feroci rappresaglie e finte conversioni, un “gioco” di cui gli orientali sono ritenuti maestri ma che inglesi e russi dimostrarono di saper condurre con analoga astuzia e doppiezza. A Kazalinsk fu ricevuto dagli ufficiali russi, i quali, pur riservandogli un'accoglienza calorosa, lo informarono che non vedevano l'ora di battersi con gli inglesi per il possesso dell'India. "Ci spareremo addosso a vicenda la mattina" gli disse uno, porgendogli un bicchiere di vodka "e berremo insieme durante la tregua". China’s Upscaling of Potato Production Sprouts Controversy : The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture start... by Karlis Rokpelnis The Great Game between Victorian Britain and Tsarist Russia was fought across desolate terrain from the Caucasus to China, over the lonely passes of the Parmirs and Karakorams, in the blazing Kerman and Helmund deserts, and through the caravan towns of the old Silk Road—both powers scrambling to control access to the riches of India and the East. When play first began, the frontiers of Russia and British India lay 2000 miles apart; by the end, this distance had shrunk to twenty miles at some points. Now, in the vacuum left by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, there is once again talk of Russian soldiers "dipping their toes in the Indian Ocean."

The story encompasses places that I was fortunate enough to visit some years after that first youthful trip, such as the marvellous cities of the Silk Road. It begins with Prince Alexander Bekovich, sent by Peter the Great in 1717 to propose an alliance with the Khan of the glorious, pink-walled city of Khiva. The Khan however had other ideas. Many years later my Khivan guide Ali gleefully showed me the place on the Great Gate where Bekovich’s head had been hung. China initiates enormous Yangtze water diversion scheme : Although not on the scale of the Grand Canal or the... by GoKunming I knew a little about the Great Game before – that 19th-century wrangling over Central Asia between Britain and Russia – but I hadn't appreciated before how motivated both sides were, in Britain's case because they feared encroachment on their ‘jewel of the Empire’, British India, and in Russia's case because they were hell-bent on expanding their influence as far as possible. But the real joy here is in the Boy's-Own adventuring of some of the principal players – ambitious explorer-spies who headed off the map and into a world of mountain fortresses, Himalayan snowstorms, Russian ambushes, gruelling sieges, and daring gunfights. At stake was a barely-known network of independent city-states whose rulers were befriended, betrayed, and played off one another by the two major powers in an attempt to win influence and ascendancy in the area.

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All’epoca il confine tra l’esplorazione scientifica e topografica e la raccolta di informazioni utili sul piano militare era spesso molto tenue, per cui questi eccentrici individui solitari o con scorta esigua, travestiti da esploratori, mercanti, ricercatori si presentavano, dopo viaggi della durata di mesi, alla corte dei signori locali con alterna fortuna, barattando merci e conoscenze e potendone uscire coperti d’oro e di onori, oppure scaraventati in celle o addirittura giustiziati! In Hopkirk's book, the reader also encounters place names that are redolent of adventure & geographic uncertainty, destinations like the Khyber Pass, the Hindu Kush, the Pamir Gap, Kashgar, Khiva, Kandahar & Kabul, the Karakorum Pass and the Taklamakan Desert (the name in the Uighur language meaning "you go in but do not come out")--a place known to swallow up travelers, soldiers, Buddhist monks, merchants, & occasionally entire caravans. The other recognized partner in The Great Game was Great Briton. Her situation was relatively simple. Con una prosa ispirata ed un racconto avvincente, in questo volume Peter Hopkirk ci accompagna nelle ignote lande orientali a rivivere l'ormai leggendario Grande Gioco, la guerra di spie che vide contrapporsi per oltre un secolo i due più potenti imperi dell'epoca, quello russo contro quello britannico. As a journalist, he sought a life in dangerous situations, being sent to Algeria to cover the revolutionary crisis in the French colonial administration. Inspired by Fitzroy Maclean's Eastern Approaches, he began to think about the Far East. He was based in New York during the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, covering the events for the Daily Express.