Book Description

This is the diary of an extraordinary journey by donkey in 1981. The story carries the reader across Turkey’s magnificent landscapes and into the houses and lives of its villagers. The physical trials and triumphs of the travellers (and their donkeys) are recounted with humour and humanity. The closely observed narrative records a traditional way of life on the eve of radical change and is illustrated with photographs, drawings, paintings and poems.

Christopher Trillo has had a lifelong interest in language and cultures. He studied English Language and Literature at Cambridge, and the History of the Turkish Language at London’s SOAS. He has had a career in teaching at all stages, from primary to tertiary. He has travelled widely, particularly in the Turkic-speaking lands of Central Asia, and spent several years living in Istanbul. He now lives in Sandwich, Kent, with his wife, Sara, a ceramicist, their children and their nervous rescue dog. He has contributed to Cornucopia for many years.

The Foreword is by the best-selling narrative historian Roger Crowley, author of Constantinople: The Last Great Siege (2005), Empires of the Sun (2008), The Accursed Tower: The Fall of Acre and the End of the Crusades and most recently, Spice: The 16th-Century Contest that Shaped the Modern World (Yale, 2024).

The outstanding photographs capture another world and time, just before the arrival of electricity in the area’s villages. The villages themselves are now largely depleted, their populations having since shrunk by as much as 80 per cent. But 1981 marked the end of a golden age, and nothing exemplified it more than the generosity heaped on the travellers.

The party included Stephen Scoffham, who was not only a brilliant photographer but an enquiring geographer. The artist Simon Nicholas was a tower of fortitude and equanimity as tensions in the party were played out.

Others came and went, including Janie Ramsay, the historian Roger Crowley, the publisher and editor of Cornucopia, John Scott, and the art historian and curator Alice Dugdale.

It has taken forty-five years for this extraordinary journey to crystallise into a book. The undercurrents (unmentioned love, etc), evocative landscape writing, unending irritations, amusing encounters with surreal characters, all contribute to a truly unusual journey. The story will linger in the mind of everyone who reads it.

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