Hall of a Thousand Columns - Softcover

This is his first venture into India but he comes upon the scene like a breath of fresh air. (Charles Allen, author of Duel in the Snows)

Were he to jump on a camel for his second volume in the great traveller's footsteps ... he would surely be the Burton of his day (Praise for previous works The Spectator)

Mackintosh-Smith has all the assets a travel writer needs: erudition without pretension; rather subversive good humour without relentless jokiness; and a descriptive eye capable of sketching complex detail in a few telling lines of ink (Praise for previous work, The Daily Telegraph)

Esoteric, raunchy, hilarious, erudite and transporting, The Hall of a Thousand Columns is a marvellous traveller's tale like no other. I sense that Ibn Battutah has finally met his match. (Eric Hansen)

As a writer and traveller Tim Mackintosh-Smith has two great gifts: he slips effortlessly between the past and the present, and he takes us with him. This is his first venture into India but he comes upon the scene like a breath of fresh air. (Charles Allen)

Tim Mackintosh-Smith has recreated, with enviable intimacy and elegance, the extraordinary life and times of the greatest traveller of pre-modern times. (Pankaj Mishra, author of The Romantics and)

Funny, cultured, humane and highly idiosyncratic (Barnaby Rogerson, Literary Review)

Part travel book, part biography, part detective story, this is a gripping read and a fitting testament to the Prince of Travellers. (Wanderlust)

Tim's aim is to sift tangible history from magical reality ...and he proves the sceptics wrong: India is the Jewel in the Prince of Travellers' turban. (The Nehru Centre)

Few writers have the talent to pull off a notable trilogy in any genre . . . Mackintosh-Smith's is not in doubt . . . Rich and fascinating (Sunday Times)

Tim Mackintosh-Smith continues in the footsteps of Moroccan traveller Ibn Battutah, revealing the rich tales of an India far off the beaten path of Taj and Raj