Histria Books is pleased to announce the release of In the Footsteps of Marco Polo by Stanley Johnson. This book is published by Histria Perspectives, an imprint dedicated to publishing outstanding works of nonfiction that illuminate history, culture, and society.
In the Footsteps of Marco Polo follows Stanley Johnson’s long-held ambition to retrace the journey of the Venetian traveller who linked East and West along the Silk Road. The book begins with a youthful 1961 expedition, planned at Oxford with fellow adventurers Tim Severin and Michael de Larrabeiti, and returns six decades later when Johnson and his son Max travel through China to complete the route they could not finish.
Part travel memoir, part historical enquiry and part family story, it moves from the High Pamirs and Xinjiang to desert railways, ancient cities, the Great Wall and Beijing. Johnson writes with the curiosity of a lifelong traveller and the eye of someone alert to the changes shaping modern China: infrastructure, landscapes, cultural traditions and the practical realities of crossing a vast country today. At a moment when conversations about China can feel remote or reductive, this is an observant, personal account of encounter, continuity and the enduring pull of the Silk Road.
Stanley Johnson is a former Member of the European Parliament and Vice-Chairman of the European Parliament’s Environment Committee who has held roles with the World Bank, the United Nations and the European Commission in Brussels. An award-winning writer and environmental advocate, he has received the Newdigate Prize for Poetry, the Greenpeace Prize, the RSPCA’s Richard Martin Award, the RSPB Medal and the WWF Leader of the Living Planet Award. From 2019 to 2023, he served as International Ambassador for the Conservative Environment Network, and he is currently President of the Gorilla Organisation, Chairman of the GEDU–Global Education Advisory Board and Adviser to the World Coastal Forum. He has written 12 non-fiction books on environmental and demographic issues, two memoirs and 11 novels, including The Commissioner, which was adapted into a film starring John Hurt. In the Footsteps of Marco Polo is his 26th book.
