Chasing Tales: Travel Writing, Journalism and the History of British Ideas about Afghanistan

by Corinne Fowler

Chasing Tales is the first exclusive study of journalism, travel writing and the history of British ideas about Afghanistan. It offers a timely investigation of the notional Afghanistan(s) that have prevailed in the popular British imagination. Casting its net deep into the nineteenth century, the study investigates the country’s mythologisation by scrutinising travel narratives, literary fiction and British news media coverage of the recent conflict in Afghanistan. This highly topical book explores the legacy of nineteenth-century paranoias and prejudices to contemporary travellers and journalists and seeks to explain why Afghans continue to be depicted as medieval, murderous, warlike and unruly. Its title, Chasing Tales , conveys the circulation, and indeed the circularity, of ideas commonly found in British travel writing and journalism. The ‘tales’ component stresses the pivotal role played by fictionalised sources, especially the writing of Rudyard Kipling, in perpetuating traumatic nineteenth-century memories of Afghan-British encounter. The subject matter is compelling and its foci of interest profoundly relevant both to current political debates and to scholarly enquiry about the ethics of travel.

292 pages, Paperback

First published September 10, 2007

About the author

Corinne Fowler is Professor of Colonialism and Heritage. She specialises in colonial history, decolonisation and the British countryside’s relationship to Empire. Her most recent book is Green Unpleasant Land: Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections Peepal Tree Press, 2020). Her forthcoming book is The Countryside: Ten Walks Through Colonial Britain (Penguin Allen Lane, 2023).

Professor Fowler directed a child-led history and writing project called Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted (2018-2022, Heritage Lottery and Arts Council). This project was widely covered by the media, including on BBC Radio 4 Front Row, Derby: 300 Years of Making and on ITV News, A Place In The Country: Part 2 - Slave trade legacies | ITV News Central. In 2020 Corinne co-authored an audit of peer-reviewed research about National Trust properties’ connections to empire Colonialism and historic slavery report | National Trust. The report won the Museums and Heritage Special Recognition Award in 2022.

Professor Fowler’s work with the National Trust attracted intense media coverage. There have been over 200 national newspaper articles on the report including in the BBC The National Trust homes where colonial links are 'umbilical' - BBC News, the Guardian I've been unfairly targeted, says academic at heart of National Trust 'woke' row | The National Trust | The Guardian, the Observer, the Telegraph, the Times, the Financial Times, the Express and Mirror. Corinne’s book Green Unpleasant Land was featured in BBC Radio 4 - Thinking Allowed, The Rural Idyll?, BBC Radio 3 New Thinking BBC Radio 3 - Arts & Ideas, New Thinking: Places of Poetry & The Colonial Countryside Project and the New Yorker Britain’s Idyllic Country Houses Reveal a Darker History | The New Yorker. Corinne has also written articles for BBC History Magazine and the Telegraph Let’s not weaponise history: let’s talk about shared histories across generations, cultures and political divides (telegraph.co.uk) to make the case for incorporating colonial history into accounts of British heritage sites. She is regularly interviewed for local and national radio including for James O Brian’s Full Disclosure podcast on LBC Radio Professor Corinne Fowler – Full Disclosure with James O'Brien (uk-podcasts.co.uk). Professor Fowler regularly advises institutions on approaches to decolonisation, sensitive histories and the Culture Wars. She receives frequent speaking invitations and has gained an international platform from which she continues to promote compassionate and collective explorations of sensitive histories across cultures, generations and political divides.