"The Orient Express, in the collective imagination, embodies the golden age of travel. The fabrics, the silverware, the woodwork; their evocative fragrance... all contribute to this particular atmosphere, created by the best craftsmen of the time. The experience on board is absolutely unique..." - Sir Kenneth Branagh, from the foreword The first train to connect Paris to Constantinople - the gateway to the Orient and epitome of all its associated desires and fantasies - the Orient Express was an immediate success. Quickly nicknamed 'the king of trains, the train of kings', it had already become a legend in its own time. This unique train and its celebrated passengers (both real and fictional) have become one of the great cultural icons of our times and have helped to create a limitless source of stories and fantasies to feed our imaginations. It's a story told here through fabulous new photographs of the restoration workshops where the historic train carriages are being brought back to life, through archive photos of famous and exotic destinations, and portraits of the most famous passengers who were lucky enough to climb aboard. SELLING POINTS: * This beautifully illustrated book captures the history, the legends and the unique style of the most famous train on earth: The Orient Express * With never-before-seen archival material * With a preface by Sir Kenneth Branagh 216 colour and 119 b/w images

The illustrious Orient Express, "the king of trains and the train of kings," could carry passengers from Paris to Constantinople in 76 hours, thanks to Belgian engineer Georges Nagelmackers's winning combination of long-distance travel and refinement. Orient Express is a photographic guide to the history and culture surrounding this mythic train and all that took place within, from its notable passengers including Tolstoy and Grace Kelly to the tales crafted by Hemingway and Agatha Christie. In 2016, during FIAC, the International Fair of Contemporary Art, a presentation at the Grand Palais in Paris will highlight the key elements of a trip on the famed rail line, featuring reinterpreted, limited-edition objects.

An imaginary traveler describes the sights, sounds and smells, the people and the places encountered on the fabled journey from Paris to Istanbul. Profusely illustrated.

In May 1977 the French national railways announced they were taking the Orient-Express, the world's most fabled train, out of service. The public outcry which followed caught the attention of Jim Sherwood. Sherwood bought two of the last four remaining carriages, then set out on a trip across Europe to track down enough original 1920s carriages, with their exquisite Art Deco marquetry and Lalique glass, to make a full train. In 1982, the lovingly restored Venice Simplon-Orient Express set off from Victoria Station for Venice, almost exactly 100 years after it had first carried passengers on their exotic journeys across the continent. Orient-Express Hotels today owns some of the great hotels of the world, all bought by Sherwood over a period of last 30 years. It also owns two other de luxe trains - the Eastern & Oriental carries passengers from Singapore to Bangkok, and the Hiram Bingham runs down through the Sacred Valley of the Incas to Machu Picchu in Peru. The purchase and restoration of each train and grand hotel has its own extraordinary story behind it, which is wittily and compellingly told.

Paris, 1914. American adventurer Sam Carter boards the Orient Express, departing France in style after an impulsive decision to desert the Foreign Legion. British diplomat Lucas Avery is already nursing a drink in the smoking car, resenting his assignment to the distant Ottoman Empire. Neither man expects anything more from the next three days and three thousand miles than rich food, expensive champagne and fine cigars.But something dangerous is lurking aboard the train, hiding in plain sight among French aristocrats and German businessmen. Through fire and darkness, through blood and ice, the Orient Express is bearing an ancient evil across the continent - and not all its passengers will live to see Constantinople...

The legend of Prester John has received much scholarly attention over the last hundred years, but never before have the sources been collected and coherently presented to readers. This book now brings together a fully-representative set of texts setting out the many and various sources from which we get our knowledge of the legend. These texts, spanning a time period from the Crusades to the Enlightenment, are presented in their original languages and in English translation (for many it is the first time they have been available in English). The story of the mysterious oriental leader Prester John, ruler of a land teeming with marvels who may come to the aid of Christians in the Levant, held an intense grip on the medieval mind from the first references in twelfth-century Crusader literature and into the early-modern period. But Prester John was a man of shifting identity, being at different times and for different reasons associated with Chingis Khan and the Mongols, with the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, with China, Tibet, South Africa and West Africa. In order to orient the reader, each of these iterations is explained in the comprehensive introduction, and in the introductions to texts and sections. The introduction also raises a thorny question not often considered: whether or not medieval audiences believed in the reality of Prester John and the Prester John Letter. The book is completed with three valuable appendices: a list of all known references to Prester John in medieval and early modern sources, a thorough description of the manuscript traditions of the all-important Prester John Letter, and a brief description of Prester John in the history of cartography.