Book description
Catching all the fascination and humour of travel in out-of-the-way
places,
One's Company
is Peter Fleming's account of his journey through Russia and Manchuria
to China when he was Special Correspondent to The Times
in the 1930s. Fleming spent seven months with the 'object of
investigating the Communist situation in South China' at a time when, as
far as he knew, 'no previous journey had been made to the anti-communist
front by a foreigner', and on its publication in 1934, One's Company
won widespread critical acclaim. Packed with classic incidents -
brake-failure on the Trans-Siberian Express, the Eton Boating Song
singing lesson in Manchuria - One's Company
was among the forerunners of a whole new approach to travel writing.
Peter Fleming was born in 1907 and educated at Eton and Oxford, where he
gained a First in English Literature and was Editor of Isis. In 1935, he
married Celia Johnson, the distinguished actress, and they had a son and
two daughters. He worked briefly in New York before joining an
expedition to look for a lost captain in Brazil. This resulted in his
first book, Brazilian Adventure, which has been translated into many
languages. As a Special Correspondent of The Times, Fleming travelled
widely in Eastern and Central Asia. He served in the Grenadier Guards
during the war and later commanded the 4th Battalion of the Oxfordshire
and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (T. A.). He received the O. B. E. in
1945 and was High Sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1952. He died in August
1971. His other books, chiefly on travel and war history, include News
from Tartary (1936), The Forgotten Journey (1952), The Siege at Peking
(1959), Bayonets to Lhasa (1961) and The Fate of Admiral Kolchak (1963).
