Peter Nasmyth Launches ‘Georgia in the Mountains of Poetry’

Stanfords in Covent Garden was a fitting place for Peter Nasmyth to launch Georgia in the Mountains of Poetry, the fourth edition of his “biography of a country”. It is an eccentric shop which stocks a host of travelling goods ranging from the essential (detailed maps and guides to almost every nook and cranny of the world) to the ridiculous (Mini Backscratcher Keyring “extendable up to six inches”).

In the Mountains of Poetry is a difficult work to categorise and Nasmyth writes in his preface to the new edition that he has watched it migrate across shop floors from the travel to the history section. It is a first-hand account of a young country slowly emerging as a confident nation which necessarily deals with the considerable turbulence it has experienced.

The mood at the launch was tangibly cheerful. In his brief speech, Nasmyth described Georgia as an adolescent country buffeted by change, but, perhaps uniquely, all the recent changes have been good.

“Svaneti is full of tourists…we were up in Tusheti: it’s being developed in an eco-way, the World Bank is doing well, all the improvements have been good improvements,” Nasmyth said. “I remember when Georgia was the Soviet Union’s richest region, then it became a technocracy, but the thing about it is that it’s always an optimistic country”.

One of the main things Nasmyth has tried to capture in his book is the character of the Georgian people.

“There’s not a great deal of similarity between the Georgians and the British, but one thing we do share is that we both love absurdity: when things go wrong, we love it”.

The event itself took place on the lowest floor, next to the Caucasian section, and guests were treated to Georgian wine and churchkhela, the latter having been brought from Georgia by Nasmyth only the day before. It was an intimate setting which meant that capacity was limited, but greater than the sum of its parts with an eclectic mix of an ex ambassador, authors, artists, and the perpetually travelling.

“[Georgia is] small, eccentric and people like to do things their own way. Like me,” quipped Nasmyth at the beginning of his speech. The book launch itself was a pleasing example of that outlook.

Georgia in the Mountains of Poetry is published by Duckworth Overlook and retails at £25

Robert Edgar