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Thomas, Lucy and Alatau: The Atkinsons` Adventures in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe

This is the first full biography of an unjustly forgotten man: Thomas Witlam Atkinson (1799 – 1861), architect, artist, traveller extraordinaire, author – and bigamist. Famous in his lifetime as `the Siberian traveller`, he spent seven years travelling nearly 40,000 miles through the Urals, Kazakhstan and Siberia with special authorisation from the Tsar, producing 560 watercolour sketches – many published here for the first time – of the often dramatic scenery and exotic peoples. He kept a detailed daily journal, now extensively quoted for the first time with his descendants` cooperation.This is also the story of Lucy, his spirited and intrepid wife and their son Alatau Tamchiboulac, called after their favourite places and born in a remote Cossack fort. They both shared his many adventures and extremes of heat and cold, travelling with him on horseback up and down precipices and across dangerous rivers, escaping a murder plot atop a great cliff and befriending the famous Decembrist exiles.