CHILDS, William John. Across Asia Minor on Foot … Third Impression. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood. 1918.
8vo. Original illustrated cloth, map paste-down at the front; pp. xvi, 459, plates after photographs by the author, cloth a little marked and dulled, light offsetting to and from endpapers, occasional light spotting to text, otherwise very good.
William John Childs has been identified as a British spy (John Fisher, On the Baghdad Road: On the Trail of J. W. Childs, Liverpool University Press, online). 'We also know that Childs had an extremely inquisitive mind; that he was gifted in the breadth of his interests, particularly in the knowledge of the classical past of Asia Minor; that he was something of an amateur archaeologist, architectural historian, and numismatist; that, whatever his past, he was by his own admission, no stranger to the sight of blood' (ibid.). He crossed and meandered 1300 miles in only 54 days on foot from Samsun to Iskenderun via Tokat, Sivas, Kayseri, Adana, and Aleppo during tensions between Italy and Turkey.
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