It is a period of history that is not generally touched upon, and historical discourse is poorer for it. This battle was not of armies but of individuals. ‘The Great Game’ was coined by a young British intelligence officer and references the struggle for political and economic ascendancy in Central Asia between Tsarist Russia and Victorian England (with Persia and Imperial China making occasional appearances) from the end of the Napoleonic Wars until the eve of World War One. That is not the case with Peter Hopkirk’s seminal work The Great Game, a book which combines wonderful writing with fascinating characters and unusual settings.
Unfamiliar places and strange names tend to throw off most western readers, since they cannot relate to them in a meaningful way. To most readers, the idea of cracking open a book on Central Asian history sounds unpleasant.
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