John Pilkington is an old friend and past president of the Club. His Radio 4 adventure travel programmes have won wide acclaim, but it’s for his thought-provoking talks and spellbinding photos that people know him best. He has lectured to over 1,000 audiences in five countries, and in 2006 received the Royal Geographical Society’s Ness Award for popularising geography and the wider understanding of the world.

Starting in Beirut, he followed a winding route through Lebanon and Syria, then crossed the Euphrates to Iraq and finally Iran, where he hiked through the Valleys of the Assassins and got briefly arrested in the holy city of Qom, before finishing on a parched island in the Persian Gulf. He says these countries “are in the news for all the wrong reasons”, and to his surprise found families and whole communities working together to survive the harsh climate and political strife.