The Unveiling of Lhasa

December, 1903. A border dispute escalates amid rumours of a proposed secret alliance between Russia and the religious monarchy at Lhasa. British Colonel Francis Younghusband marches his Indian troops north with a battalion of coolies and special correspondent for The Daily Mail Edmund Candler in tow. It was a thrilling new chapter in the "Great Game" of Asian colonial supremacy, which sent the men deep into the heart of a region that few outsiders had ever lived to recount.

Edmund Candler (1874-1926) was a popular war correspondent, once called “the very soul of fearlessness” by The London Times. Born and educated in England, he became an educator in India and was named principal of Mohimara College in Patiala State. In 1903, he lost an arm as special correspondent to accompany the Younghusband mission in Tibet. In WWI, he wrote from the Western Front and Iraq. He was the author of several books including novels and nonfiction. David Leffman first visited China in 1985 and studied Mandarin at SOAS, London, and Sichuan University, Chengdu. Since 1990 he has worked as a travel writer and photographer, co-authoring guidebooks for Rough Guides and Dorling Kindersley to Australia, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong and Iceland. He was also consultant editor on Kylie Kwong's My China Cookbook. He spends his spare time cooking, hiking, scuba diving and getting beaten around by martial artists.