John Ure has travelled with the Bedouin of the Arabian peninsular, the Moors and Tuareg of the Sahara, migratory pastoral tribes of southern Iran, and the Mongol horsemen and Tartar descendents of Central Asia. He also writes of the eccentric Europeans who sought out nomads - exiles from high society, like Lady Hester Stanhope and the Hon Jane Digby; adventurers Richard Burton and T. E. Lawrence; and, distinguished figures like Vita Sackville-West, Freya Stark and Bruce Chatwin, and oddities - a tetchy Consul Abbot in Persia, or two missionary ladies in the Gobi Desert. Often stranger than the exotic peoples they visited, John Ure brings them to life with practised skill and humour.