Peter Hopkirk’s Followers (277)

Peter Hopkirk

Born

in Nottingham, The United Kingdom

December 15, 1930

Died

August 22, 2014

Genre

History, Journalism

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Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank Stewart Hopkirk, a prison chaplain, and Mary Perkins. He grew up at Danbury, Essex, notable for the historic palace of the Bishop of Rochester. Hopkirk was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford. The family hailed originally from the borders of Scotland in Roxburghshire where there was a rich history of barbaric raids and reivers hanging justice. It must have resonated with his writings in the history of the lawless frontiers of the British Empire. From an early age he was interested in spy novels carrying around Buchan's Greenmantle and Kipling's Kim stories about India. At the Dragon he played rugby, and shot at Bisley.

Before turning full-time author, he was an ITN reporter and newsc Peter Hopkirk was born in Nottingham, the son of Frank Stewart Hopkirk, a prison chaplain, and Mary Perkins. He grew up at Danbury, Essex, notable for the historic palace of the Bishop of Rochester. Hopkirk was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford. The family hailed originally from the borders of Scotland in Roxburghshire where there was a rich history of barbaric raids and reivers hanging justice. It must have resonated with his writings in the history of the lawless frontiers of the British Empire. From an early age he was interested in spy novels carrying around Buchan's Greenmantle and Kipling's Kim stories about India. At the Dragon he played rugby, and shot at Bisley.

Before turning full-time author, he was an ITN reporter and newscaster for two years, the New York City correspondent of Lord Beaverbrook's The Sunday Express, and then worked for nearly twenty years on The Times; five as its chief reporter, and latterly as a Middle East and Far East specialist. In the 1950s, he edited the West African news magazine Drum, sister paper to the South African Drum. Before entering Fleet Street, he served as a subaltern in the King's African Rifles in 1949 – in the same battalion as Lance-Corporal Idi Amin, later to emerge as a Ugandan tyrant.

Hopkirk travelled widely over many years in the regions where his six books are set – Russia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and eastern Turkey.

He sought a life in dangerous situations as a journalist, being sent to Algeria to cover the revolutionary crisis in the French colonial administration. Inspired by Maclean's Eastern Approaches he began to think about the Far East. During the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 he was based in New York covering the events for the Express. No stranger to misadventure, Hopkirk was twice arrested and held in secret police cells, once in Cuba, where he was accused of spying for the US Government. His contacts in Mexico obtained his release. In the Middle East, he was hijacked by Arab terrorists in Beirut, which led to his expulsion. The PLO hijacked his plane, a KLM jet bound for Amsterdam at the height of the economic oil crises in 1974. Hopkirk confronted them and persuaded the armed gang to surrender their weapons.

His works have been officially translated into fourteen languages, and unofficial versions in local languages are apt to appear in the bazaars of Central Asia. In 1999, he was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writing and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.[3] much of his research came from the India Office archives, British Library, St Pancras.

Hopkirk's wife Kathleen Partridge wrote A Traveller's Companion to Central Asia, published by John Murray in 1994 (ISBN 0-7195-5016-5).

Hopkirk died on 22 August 2014 at the age of 83. ...more

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Peter Hopkirk’s books

Average rating: 4.26 · 13,147 ratings · 1,222 reviews · 22 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia 4.32 avg rating — 8,035 ratings — published 1990 — 65 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Cities and Treasures of Chinese Central Asia 4.17 avg rating — 1,397 ratings — published 1980 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Trespassers on the Roof of the World: The Secret Exploration of Tibet 4.19 avg rating — 1,233 ratings — published 1982 — 36 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Setting the East Ablaze: Lenin's Dream of an Empire in Asia 4.21 avg rating — 938 ratings — published 1984 — 20 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire 4.28 avg rating — 698 ratings — published 1994 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Quest for Kim: In Search of Kipling's Great Game by Peter Hopkirk, Janina Slater (Illustrator) 3.96 avg rating — 414 ratings — published 1997 — 14 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	(The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (Kodansha Globe)) [By: Hopkirk, Peter] [May, 1994] 4.25 avg rating — 4 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Tibet: Reisverhalen by Peter Hopkirk, Sven Hedin, Ekai Kawaguchi 3.40 avg rating — 5 ratings — published 1999	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Setting the East Ablaze 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Die SeidenstraÃŸe 2.50 avg rating — 2 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Peter Hopkirk (?)

“While they were in Urumchi, Pelliot met an old friend – or rather foe – from Peking days. Following the defeat of the Boxers, the Duke Lan, brother of the movement’s leader and himself deeply implicated in the uprising, had been exiled for life to Urumchi, where he devoted his remaining years to photography. ‘We had fought one another in 1900, but the passage of time heals all things,’ Pelliot wrote afterwards, adding: ‘We sealed our friendship with many a glass of champagne.”
― Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia

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“Evidence he discovered in an ancient rubbish dump showed that, after being abandoned to the desert for several centuries, Endere was then reoccupied by the Chinese, but some time after Hsuan-tsang’s visit. The circular rampart had clearly been built to try to keep the warlike Tibetans at bay. The Tibetan graffiti found within the rampart bear witness to what is already known from the Chinese annals – that at the end of the eighth century the fierce Tibetans finally drove the Chinese from the area.”
― Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia

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“Jeannette Mirsky, his biographer, explains: ‘Dandan-uilik was the classroom where Stein learned the grammar of the ancient sand-buried shrines and houses: their typical ground plans, construction, and ornamentation, their art, and something of their cultic practices. He also used it as a laboratory in which to find the techniques best suited to excavating ruins covered by sands as fluid as water, which, like water trickled in almost as fast as the diggers bailed it out. He had no precedents to guide him, no labour force already trained in the cautions, objectives and methods of archaeology.… He felt his way from what was easy to what was difficult, from what he knew he would find to discoveries he had not dared to anticipate. His approach was both cautious and experimental.”
― Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia

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Peter Hopkirk’s Followers (277)

Peter Hopkirk

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Peter Hopkirk’s books