For sale in CIS only! The adventurer and artist John Castle, of mixed British and Prussian descent, was one of several foreigners commissioned by the Russian Empire to take part in the Orenburg Expedition which started in 1734. Its aims were to secu...

For sale in CIS only! "Dear me! It is a strange world. Particularly the Indian division of it". In 1895/6 the sixty-year-old Mark Twain set off on a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts from a publishing company bankruptcy, notes from which a...

For sale in CIS only! The Isle of Wight is England's largest island, but its diamond-shape is at most 23 miles long and 13 miles wide. Anchored close to the Hampshire coast, its location has created a sheltered waterway, the Solent, with its own loc...

For sale in CIS only! In 1867 the "Daily Alta California" commissioned Mark Twain to cover the story of the world s first luxury cruise, a six-month round tour to the Holy Land from New York on board the Quaker City, an ex-Civil War Mississippi side...

For sale in CIS only! Byzantium, Constantinople, Istanbul: these are only three names that have been given to the city that straddles two continents, was the capital of two multinational empires and is today a vibrant commercial and artistic city, t...

For sale in CIS only! Scattered off the west coast of mainland Greece are the seven Ionian Islands, celebrated for their spectacular landscapes, olive groves and classical associations. Together with the mountainous mainland region of Epirus, the co...

For sale in CIS only! George Borrow – brilliant linguist, expert on gypsy culture and author of "Wild Wales" (1862) – remains an enigmatic character whose fiction and travel writing mix autobiography and invention. From 1835 to 1840, he worked as an...

For sale in CIS only! Aged twenty-eight, Sabine Baring-Gould, the young writer and teacher, was fascinated by the tradition of the Icelandic sagas, and this was the catalyst for his adventure and the book that emerged from it. His voyage took him fr...

For sale in CIS only! A thousand years ago the French abbey of Cluny was the hub of one of the most powerful empires of the Middle Ages, and the spiritual heart of Europe. Nearly 1,500 religious houses were subject to its authority, and it was the s...

For sale in CIS only! Notorious for its recent military dictatorships, South America is less well known for its wars. But since the dawn of independence in the early nineteenth century, the continent has witnessed a series of conflicts, some short a...