author
Harry De Windt
1856–1933
An explorer and travel writer with a taste for hard routes and remote frontiers, this late-Victorian adventurer turned journeys across Siberia, Central Asia, and the Far East into vivid books for readers back home. His life mixed imperial connections, long overland travel, and a reporter’s eye for strange places and difficult roads.
4 Audiobooks
From Pekin to Calais by Land
by Harry De Windt
A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistán
by Harry De Windt
On the Equator
by Harry De Windt
From Paris to New York by Land
by Harry De Windt
About the author
Born in Paris in 1856, Harry de Windt was a British explorer and author whose books were published under the name Harry de Windt. He studied at Magdalene College, Cambridge, but did not take a degree, and instead moved toward a life of travel. Early on, he served as aide-de-camp to Charles Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, his brother-in-law through de Windt’s sister Margaret.
He became known for ambitious journeys through regions that many British readers would have thought distant or forbidding, especially across northern Asia. His travel writing drew on visits to places such as Siberia, Sakhalin, Central Asia, and Japan, and he developed a reputation for seeking out difficult overland routes rather than comfortable tourist paths.
De Windt wrote in an energetic, observant style that helped make far-off places feel immediate to his audience. He died in Bournemouth in 1933, leaving behind a body of travel books that capture both the curiosity and the attitudes of the age in which he traveled.