Matthew Leeming
When Men Wore Mustaches
Duel in the Snows: The True Story of the Younghusband Mission to Lhasa
By Charles Allen
John Murray 350pp £20 order from our bookshop
The story of the Younghusband Mission, or invasion of Tibet, has been told many times. Within a year of reaching Lhasa five of its participants wrote what we would now call instant books. They perceived it as a quest, both secular and religious. All cultures have quest narratives, which run (according to structural anthropologists) as follows:
The Quest begins with an Originator who needs something or someone. He sends the Hero to find it. It requires a substantial effort to obtain. A journey follows on which the hero meets Opponents and Helpers with whose help he surmounts various challenges. The object may be held by a
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