The Blaze in the Balkans: Selected Writings 1903-1941

M. Edith Durham is best known for her classic travel books about the Balkans. However, she was also a passionate, articulate, and well-informed commentator on the twists and turns of Balkan politics and the machinations of the Great Powers. The pieces in this collection of her writings from the early half of the twentieth century remind us of the many connections between Britain and the Balkans over recent centuries - of Tennyson, Disraeli, Lord Fitzmaurice, Aubrey Herbert, and Margaret Hasluck. With its wide geographical sweep, the book offers a fair picture of the Balkans in the early twentieth century: Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia are all represented - their dangers and wonders, ugly brutality and startling beauty, history, custom, geography, and politics. The anthology offers vivid pictures of Balkan locations which will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in modern Balkan history.

Mary Edith Durham (1863 - 1944) was a British traveler, artist, and writer who became famous for her anthropological accounts of life in Albania in the early 20th century.

Robert Elsie is a writer, translator, interpreter, and specialist in Albanian studies.

Bejtullah Destani is Director of the Centre for Albanian Studies.

Elizabeth Gowing works with the Ethnological Museum in Pristina, Kosovo and on other projects to stimulate travel to this beautiful and little-known part of Europe.