From the Holy Mountain [rare books]

'Any travel writer who is so good at his job as to be brilliant, applauded, loved and needed has to have an unusual list of qualities, and William Dalrymple has them all in aces. Dalrymple's ear for conversation is as good as Alan Bennett's. The best and most unexpected book I have read since I forget when'

Peter Levi

'Nobody but William Dalrymple and possibly Patrick Leigh Fermor could have produced so compulsively readable a book'

John Julius Norwich, Observer

'A rich stew of history and travel narrative spiced with anecdote, opinion and bon mots... The future of travel literature lies in the hands of gifted authors like Dalrymple who shine their torches into the shadowy hinterland of the human story territory of all' the most foreign