Hailed as a classic upon its first publication in 1934, The Valleys of the Assassins firmly established Freya Stark as one of her generation's most intrepid explorers. The book chronicles her travels
In 1934, famed British traveler Freya Stark sailed down the Red Sea, alighting in Aden, located at the tip of the Arabian peninsula. From this backwater outpost, Stark set forth on what was to be her
Lycia, on the southwestern coast of Turkey, is an ancient land steeped in mystery, myth, and legend. Figured prominently throughout history and literature, Lycia is known as home to the fiery chimera;
Freya Stark first journeyed to Iraq in 1927. Seven years after the establishment of the British Mandate, the modern state was in its infancy and worlds apart from the country it has since become. Duri
When Roman legions marched into Asia Minor in 200BC, their plan was to secure a buffer zone between the Mediterranean, which they virtually owned, and the area beyond, which they sought to isolate rat
Written just after the Second World War, Perseus in the Wind (named after the constellation) is perhaps the most personal, and haunting, of all Freya Stark's writings. She muses on the seasons, the ef
In the fall of 1928, Freya Stark, a thirty-five-year-old Englishwoman, set out on her first journey to the Middle East. Bolstered by a command of Arabic, a fair knowledge of Farsi, and an irrepressib
In 1934 Freya Stark made her first journey to the Hadhramaut in what is now Yemen—the first woman to do so alone. Even though that journey ended in disappointment, sickness, and a forced rescue, Stark
