| The British-Yemeni Society |
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Book
review
Travellers in Arabia Robin Bidwell Garnet Publishing It is a great sadness that Robin Bidwell did not live to see his book reprinted in paperback, the BYS has lost an old friend and valued member who will be much missed. The book, first published in 1976, is a chronology of European travellers in Arabia from the beginning of the sixteenth century to the 1950s. It looks at the travellers themselves, their motives and eccentricities as well as their contributions to science or their outrageous and unlikely tales. These vignettes are set in a clear and well written historical framework and the whole has a nice lightness of touch, a combination of erudition, sympathy and irreverence. Robin wrote in his introduction that he had written this mainly to please himself and hoped that his enjoyment would be communicated to others. It is. JAMES NASH, November 1994 |