Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia is a 1941 travel memoir by British author Rebecca West. Over more than a thousand pages, West recounts six weeks spent in the former Yugoslavia in 1937, interweaving her travel narrative with a thorough history and ethnography of the region, in an attempt to “show the past side by side with the present it created.” Published shortly after the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a portrait of European civilization on the brink of war. It is widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of travel writing in the English language.

In the prologue, West explains her interest in Yugoslavia while setting out one of its central themes: the interconnectedness of lives and events, and of place and history. She remembers learning in 1934 that King Alexander of Yugoslavia had been assassinated and realizing that she knew nothing about the region. It occurred to her then that World War I had begun in the Balkans, and that her ignorance of the region, therefore, might prove to be ignorance of her own destiny. She decides to visit Yugoslavia.

On the train from Austria to Zagreb, Croatia, West and her husband, Henry, encounter some “disagreeable” Germans. Discovering that another passenger has a second-class ticket, the Germans force him to leave the first-class carriage. West and Henry later discover that the Germans themselves only have second-class tickets.



In Zagreb, the couple meets up with three local friends: Constantine, a poet and a Serb, and two Croats, the mathematician Valetta and a journalist, Marko. The three men bicker constantly as they show West and Henry around the city and the outlying village of Shestine, ending up in Zagreb’s cathedral. Meanwhile, West narrates Croatia’s troubled history, focusing on its long oppression by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. West identifies lingering wounds of that oppression in the contemporary Croatian psyche. She reports on Valetta’s political fight against Croatia’s undemocratic regime.

From Zagreb, West and Henry take a train to Dalmatia. She judges the island of Rab one of the world’s most beautiful places and enthuses about the Roman architecture of Split. This leads to a discussion of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. The couple proceeds through Trogir, Korčula, and Dubrovnik, which West finds disagreeable. Nevertheless, West admires the Dalmatians for resisting the onslaught of Turkish invaders in the Middle Ages.

Next, the couple travels to the first Slav region on their tour: Herzegovina. West is appalled by the legacy of Turkish rule in the province. At Trebinje, they visit a market where all the traders are Muslim Slavs. At a historic Turkish house, West is skeptical about the aging owner’s account of its importance. West and Henry discuss politics on their way to the Muslim town of Mostar.



In Sarajevo, Bosnia, they are reunited with their friend Constantine. West is impressed by the handsomeness and bearing of the Bosnians—Christians and Muslims alike—and offers some observations on the relations between the sexes. A committed feminist, West argues that in areas of the world where male supremacy is absolute, men are degraded by it (while women at least learn from the hardships they face). West recounts the bloody history of Sarajevo, conquered by the Turks in 1464 and by the Austrians in the nineteenth century. Her narrative centers on the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by the Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip, the event that ignited the First World War.

West, Henry, and Constantine travel together to Belgrade, Serbia, where they are joined by Constantine’s wife, Gerda. German Gerda’s manners offend West and Henry. West is dismayed by the contrast between the opulence of Belgrade’s governmental officials and the shabby poverty of the professional classes. As the two couples visit local monasteries and monuments, West delves into Serbia’s history, beginning with the Turkish conquest in 1389 and culminating in the expulsion of the Turks in 1912. West also relates the story of King Alexander, assassinated in 1934.

West finds the Byzantine architecture of Macedonia “supremely beautiful.” She and Henry visit many Orthodox churches and monasteries, including the church at Neresi, where she describes its ornate frescoes. Bishop Nikolai of Ochrid makes a profound impression on West. However, at a St. George’s Eve ceremony, West is repelled by a traditional animal sacrifice.



With Constantine, West and Henry visit the site of the battle of Kosovo, where the Turks defeated the Serbs in the Middle Ages. Constantine recites some traditional poems about the defeat. West finds the region deeply dispiriting, and links the atmosphere to the defeat and death of the great Serbian emperor Stephen Dushan: “In the forty-ninth year of his life, at a village so obscure that it is not now to be identified, he died, in great pain, as if he had been poisoned. Because of his death, many disagreeable things happened. For example, we sat in Pristina, our elbows on a tablecloth stained brown and puce, with chicken drumsticks on our plates meager as sparrow-bones, and there came towards us a man and a woman; and the woman was carrying on her back the better part of a plow.”

Even more dispiriting to West is Montenegro, where she meets tragically impoverished peasants and learns about the folk culture steeped in an ideal of bloody heroism. On a mountain climb, their local guide leads West and Henry astray. West and Henry refuse to follow him and turn back. Later, they realize that the guide risked their lives rather than admit he was lost.

In an epilogue to the book, West draws on her experiences in Yugoslavia to analyze the rise of fascism in Europe. She criticizes the British government’s policy of appeasement and praises the Yugoslavians for resisting the Nazi invasion.