Christopher Robbins (1) (1946–)

UK author Christopher Robbins, was on an airplane when he discovered his seat mate was traveling to Kazakhstan to meet his online bride.

Although Robbins is a travel author, he was totally unfamiliar with Kazakhstan. His seatmate enlightened him with the bit he knew – tulips were first domesticated there – as were apples. Robbins determined to go there and explore this land so unknown to the West. The result is fascinating and engaging.

Some of the highlights I enjoyed:
“You could put Texas or France in it five times over – or the whole of western Europe” P4

- Apples and tulips were first domesticated there.

- Traditional tribe berkutchies still hunt with Golden Eagles

- Astana, the modern capital city was created out of nothing in the middle of the empty steppes

- the author met with President Nursultan Nazarbayev and was invited along on his tour to the southern parts of K and saw: -
- Soviet space launch site
- Soviet nuclear testing site and nuclear weapons
- environmental disaster of Ural Sea – too much water removed to irrigate cotton leaving sea salty instead of fresh water and destroying agriculture in surrounding area

- The remote steppes were the location of the Soviet gulag system made famous by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (but as Solzhenitsyn opposed Kazakhstan separation from Russia, Solzhenitsyn is not honored by the Kazakhs) Trotsky and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were also exiled there among thousands and thousand of others.

- politics before and after the breakup of the Soviet Union as of 2008 (publication of the book).

This was written with humor and warmth and I enjoyed reading it.… (altro)

A very amusing and humane memoir of Brian Desmond Hurst, who in his time was a well regarded Irish film director, although in early 1970’s London when the author first met Brian, he was in his late seventies.
Nearly half way through the book Christopher Robbins records his suggestion that Brian write his memoirs, but much later (2004) performed this in what reads like an act of fond remembrance, as he puts it:
I knew even then that together they pictured a vanished and more elegant world but at the time saw them at the time as little more than well-spun yarns.
Now I realize their true worth. Brian told stories as a way to process life, to parcel up the pain, order the chaos and confusion, and endow the pointless with meaning. Experience was held on to and made valuable by transmutation into anecdote, preferably amusing. Brian put at least as much effort into the story of his life as he did his life’s work of film.
In reading this book, I initially enjoyed the rakishly flamboyant anecdotes of decadent Tangiers and the criminal Big Freddy, before appreciating the overall story making arc of Brian’s life, including his recollections of Gallipoli in the First World War.

I read the, as ever, elegantly produced Slightly Foxed edition.… (altro)

This unique history of Air America reads like an adventure story but still contains a thorough historical record. Based upon interviews with the principals involved, this is the book's strength and its weakness. Many of the undisclosed sources, I am told by now retired Air America supervisors and employees in the know, revolve around early reports the author received from ex-employees who were ready to talk. Some may have been disgruntled and others were lower ranking individuals who were not in a position to understand the grand strategy of Air America. Nonetheless, the individual stories are almost all riveting, stretching from the postwar era in Asia to the fall of Saigon, Cambodia, and Laos. It would have been interesting to hear more about Thailand during this period, too, from some of the central characters, especially as that is where many of them are living today.… (altro)