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The Freya Stark Collection

The Freya Stark Collection

Freya Stark (1893–1993), ‘the poet of travel’, was the doyenne of Middle East travel writers and one of the most courageous and adventurous women travellers in history. She travelled extensively through Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Southern Arabia, where she became the first western woman to travel through the Hadhramaut. Usually solo, she ventured to places few Europeans had ever been. Her travels earned her the Founder’s Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and she was created a Dame in 1975. She received huge public acclaim and her many, now classic, books include Traveller’s Prelude, The Valleys of the Assassins, Ionia, The Southern Gates of Arabia, Alexander’s Path, Dust in the Lion’s Paw and East in West.

A Winter in Arabia: A Journey Through Yemen
Baghdad Sketches: Journeys Through Iraq
Ionia: A Quest
Rome on the Euphrates: The Story of a Frontier
The Lycian Shore: A Turkish Odyssey
The Minaret of Djam: An Excursion in Afghanistan
The Southern Gates of Arabia: A Journey in the Hadhramaut
The Zodiac Arch

 

'It was rare to leave her company without feeling that the world was somehow larger and more promising. Her life was something of a work of art... The books in which she recorded her journeys were seductively individual...Nomad and social lioness, public servant and private essayist, emotional victim and mythmaker.'
Colin Thubron, The New York Times

'Few writers have the capacity to do with words what Faberge could do with gems – to fashion them, without violating their quality. It is this extraordinary talent which sets Freya Stark apart from her fellow craftsman in the construction of books on travel.'
Daily Telegraph

'Freya Stark remains unexcelled as an interpreter of brief encounters in wild regions against the backdrop of history.'
Observer

'One of the finest travel writers of our century.'
New Yorker

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