Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron drove some 10,000 miles across the western Soviet Union in the early 1980s, from the Baltic to the Caucasus; Among the Russians (1983) is the record of that trip, and American editions carry the title Where Nights Are Longest. He learned Mandarin before setting out for Behind the Wall (1987), then crossed China by train, by bicycle and on foot, and the book took both the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. Thubron, born in London in 1939 and educated at Eton, worked in publishing and made documentary films before Mirror to Damascus (1967), his first book. He writes novels as well: A Cruel Madness (1984) won the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award, and To the Last City reached the Booker longlist in 2002. He was appointed CBE in 2007 and served as president of the Royal Society of Literature from 2009 to 2017.