To celebrate the paperback launch of this 2024 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards, Travel Book of the Year shortlisted book, Tom Parfitt came to Stanfords last night to talk to Tom de Waal aboutHigh Caucasus. It was such a fascinating, moving and sobering evening hearing these two experts on the region talk about reminiscences and predictions.
From Destinations: The Holiday & Travel Show in London’s Olympia, The Stanfords Travel Writers Festival welcomes The Times Russia correspondent Tom Parfitt. He talks to Ann Morgan about his Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year shortlisted book ‘High Caucasus’ and discusses his deep ties to the area.
On 1 September 2004, Chechen and Ingush militants took more than a thousand people captive at a school in the Caucasus region of southern Russia. Working as a correspondent, Tom Parfitt witnessed the bloody climax in which 314 hostages died, more than half of them children. The experience left Tom emotionally shredded, struggling to find a way to return to his life in Moscow and put to rest the ghosts of the Beslan siege.