Bayonets to Lhasa

The British invasion of Tibet in 1904 is one of the strangest events in British imperial history. Planned by Lord Curzon as a strategic move in the Great Game, the incursion was in fact ill-conceived and inspired by only the weakest of motivations. Led by the soldier, explorer, and mystic Francis Younghusband, the mission—doomed from the very beginning—became caught in political cross-fire and the distant and destructive machinations of China and England and ended in ignominy and disappointment. Peter Fleming's Bayonets to Lhasa is a gripping depiction of this unusual chain of events, its charismatic protagonists, and the repercussions that continue to be felt throughout the region.