英国人： 作家 - 霍普柯克

英国人： 作家 - 霍普柯克， 因其对丝绸之路的专著， 而享誉全球； 下面是出版商对其一生之评判 （2006）：

Peter Hopkirk has travelled widely over many years in the regions where his books are set – Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, India and Pakistan, Iran and Eastern Turkey. Before turning full time author, he was an ITN reporter and newscaster for two years, the New York correspondent of the old Daily Express, and then worked for nearly twenty years on the Times; five as its chief reporter, and latterly as a Middle and Far East specialist. In the 1950s, he edited the West African news magazine Drum, sister paper to its legendary South Aftrican namesake. Before entering Fleet Street he served as a subaltern in the King’s African Rifles – in the same battalion as Lance Corporal Idi Amin, later to emerge as the Ugandan tyrant. No stranger to misadventure, Hopkirk has twice been held in secret-police cells – in Cuba and the Middle East – and also been hijacked by Arab terrorists. His works have been translated into fourteen languages. In 1999, he was awarded the Sir Percy Sykes Memorial Medal for his writing and travels by the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.

注： However, his fame is made by “Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: the search for the lost treasures of Central Asia” (London: John Murray, 1980; ISBN 978-0-7195-6448-2). 究其成名之源， 估计是逃不开， 从未在 “丝绸之路” 的地域上发现过其身影； 当下之判断， 该书出版会引起霍普柯克上路的欲望。