13 MAY 1966, Page 21

A visit to Afghanistan made some thirty years earlier is

described in a new paperback edition of Robert Byron's The Road to Oxiana (Cape, I5s.). He writes in the 'with it' style of an older generation and comes over as a sort of Bertie Wooster, but a highly intelligent one. In those days a travelling Englishman was someone to be reckoned with and God help anyone who stood between him and the noonday sun. There were few, if any, American botanists or diplo- mats about in those days. And in any case they would jolly well have had to depend on the large British legation in Kabul (ninety on the staff and six ball-boys to one game of tennis) to get them out of trouble. Mr Byron also visited Persia and one memorable feature of his study is the loving detail with which he describes the architecture.