The Race to the Future

Kassia St Clair has clearly done her research … she tells a thrilling tale … Torrential rain and choking dust, narrow mountain passes that required literally hewing a passage … It’s an incredible story * Country Life *An incredible and stirring story … a mix of competition, camaraderie as well as a larky sense of adventure … Down goes the flag. Smash goes the bottle. Shards of emerald glass and champagne spume catch the light. The race from Peking to Paris has begun * The Spectator *And it’s Go, Go, Go … A captivating history of a seemingly impossible journey and one of the most challenging endurance trials in the history of motoring … Skillful researcher and fine storyteller, St Clair’s narrative is full of surprises … Fabulous … she hopes to follow Prince Borghese on his heroic journey and - if you share my absorbed interest in her adventurous narrative you may want to emulate her. See you there? – Miranda Seymour * Literary Review *

Kassia St Clair studied the history of women’s dress and the masquerade during the eighteenth century at Bristol and Oxford. She has since written about design and culture for the Economist, House & Garden, TLS, Quartz and New Statesman, and has had a column about colour in Elle Decoration since 2013. Her first book The Secret Lives of Colour was a top-ten bestseller, a Radio 4 Book of the Week and has been translated into over a dozen languages; her second, The Golden Thread, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Award. She lives in London.