A date for your diary. On 22nd January at 2.30pm I will be giving a lecture and slide show at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the remarkable story of Willie Read and his 1912 hunting expedition from Srinagar in Kashmir to Barnaul in Siberia – a journey of almost 3,000 miles.

Regular readers will recall my articles earlier this year about how I identified Willie Read as the creator of a set of magic lantern slides that I had purchased. My talk at the RGS, entitled A Magic Lantern Mystery Tour, and presented as part of the ‘Be Inspired’ series organised by Eugene Rae, will give me the opportunity to talk about my findings in public for the first time. It will also be available online. Free for RGS/IBG members and £5 for others. More information here. Hope to see you there.

John Massey Stewart, whose book on the Atkinsons greatly added to the growing literature on the travels of the intrepid couple, passed away on 26th October at the age of 90.

Mr Stewart’s book, Thomas Lucy and Alatau Too: The Atkinsons’ Adventures in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe, was published in 2018, and – as the title suggests – remains the only publication that offers a perspective on the couple’s six years of travels throughout the Russian Empire.

He was an authority on Russia and the former Soviet Union and had visited the USSR/Russia dozens of times. In 1961 he and David Ashwanden, made a wonderful journey across the Soviet Union in a Mini Minor lent to them by the British Motor Corporation. They travelled from Leningrad south through the Ukraine to Odessa, by ship to Yalta and ship again to the east coast of the Black Sea through Georgia and over the Caucasus. The journey resulted in Mr Stewart’s first book, Across the Russias (Harvill Press, 1969).

During the course of his life Mr Stewart created an extensive collection of images of Russia, particularly in the form of postcards that illustrated subjects such as peasant life in Imperial Russia under the Romanovs and on to the 1917 revolution and the Soviet regime, as well as costume, rituals, traditions, the arts, architecture and places. He also took many photographs himself, all of which can now be accessed through the Mary Evans Picture Library. He also donated his papers to the Royal Asiatic Society. His funeral will take place on Friday 24th November 2023 at St Michael’s Church, South Grove, London, N6 6BJ at 1.30 p.m.