Tibet

Description

Published by Bracken Books, London, 1981 (1st UK English Language Edition published by Frederick Muller in the same year – this is in identical format), D/w, Fine.    A sumptuous coffee-table book with 237 full colour illustrations, put together by a team of Tibetan authors and scholars who have covered history, culture, landscape, customs, religions and everyday life in Tibet.  The volume is particularly good at capturing what remains of the cultural treasures of the old Tibet, and was produced at a time when the Chinese authorities were relaxing their borders some thirty years after their invasion of Tibet in 1950.  They even co-operated to an extent in the production of this volume (which has been translated into a number of languages), even though not all of its content is uncritical of China and particularly of their actions in the previous twenty years since the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959.