Nicholas & Elizabeth Clinch spoke at the Society on 10 March 2008, as part of our Monday night lecture series.

They are the authors of Through a Land of Extremes: The Littledales of Central Asia, an account of Teresa and St. George Littledale, who explored Central Asia in the 1890s with a fox terrier.

  You came to the Society to research the Littledales. What did you find?
Our research began and ended in the RGS-IBG Library. In 1986, we hoped we would find the Littledale papers in the Archives. We found only a few letters but they started us on our way.

We ended our effort 20 years later by getting copies of pictures found in the Society's Archives taken by St. George Littledale during their Tibet trip. These were especially valuable to us because all of the Littledales' own photographs were destroyed in a fire. The RGS-IBG photographs are the backbone of the illustrations in our book.

  Were you surprised by anything you found at the Society?
The most interesting thing we learned was Teresa's first name. She was always referred to as "Mrs. Littledale," even in her obituaries.

We found her name from her signature on a letter she wrote to Keltie at the RGS on Christmas Day 1896, thanking him for an inscribed silver dog collar for Tanny, their fox terrier.

Throughout the long saga of our efforts, the personnel at the Library were always extremely helpful and encouraging to us and we are most grateful to them.