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Shooting leave was what British Army officers and diplomats abroad were awarded to give them a break from their mundane duties far from home. It was a chance to relax for a few weeks and fire double-barrelled volleys at every game bird and wild animal that came into their sights.

The more promising young officers were encouraged to travel and make contact with local chiefs, picking up whatever useful gossip might come their way.

John Ure, who as a young diplomat went on several shooting leaves, has selected 16 people whose so-called 'shooting leaves' were pretexts for perilous spying missions, sometimes in literally uncharted territory.

The mid and late-19th century was the apogee of the Great Game, in which Britain manoeuvred to keep Russia out of Northern India and what are now Pakistan and Northern Iran. Audacious young officers were sent out on these missions on the unspoken understanding that they were expendable; they were on their own.

Nobody was safe. From porters to viziers, treachery abounded. In Kabul, Burnes, disguised as an Armenian, was so convincing that he was even offered command of the ruler's army, but he still took the precaution of hiding his letters of credit in an amulet on his wrist and learned the importance of not sleeping with his feet towards Mecca. After near fatal adventures, taking armed escorts and adopting a succession of disguises, he made it back to Persia and safety.

These young men were fiercely patriotic, ready to die for Queen and country. They were also unquestioningly racist, since their lives depended on such distinctions.

To maintain their disguises they needed to be word-perfect in several languages if they were to pass muster with local rulers such as Murad Beg, who hated Europeans and was liable to murder them.

The shooting leave of Lieutenant James Abbott, of the Bengal Artillery, ended up lasting two years, after brushes with death which included a murderous attack by Kazakh bandits in the Russian snows.

He lost two fingers, but managed to conceal the ring on his other hand so it wouldn't be cut off, too. Semi-conscious and beaten to a jelly, he prayed for strength to die 'without disgracing my country or my name'. He was saved from death by a profit-conscious Kazakh.

No wonder there was a market for the books survivors wrote. Abbot's came in at 800 pages. Readers were as fascinated by the unknown cultures of central Asia as Asians were intrigued by their image of England.

The powerful Khan of Khiva, who like all these rulers wanted protection from the Russians, asked: 'Is it true that an Englishman can tell, by looking at a hill, whether it contains gold?' For some, like the dashing Valentine Baker, a friend of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), shooting leave meant just that. He left from Charing Cross in 1873 with more than a ton of luggage: most of it cartridges to shoot bears, red deer and tigers in Turkey; wolves and wild boar in the Caucasus; partridges, woodcock and bustards in Persia, and wild sheep and ibex in Central Asia.

He also took Worcestershire Sauce, surveying instruments and salmon rods. The trip was plagued by the usual treachery, defections, bribes, squabbles and fevers, but Baker's friendship with Crown Prince Michael of Russia opened many doors and was a diplomatic triumph.

My favourite is Captain Fred Burnaby, a giant of a man, whose party trick was to hold out at arm's length two billiard cues by the pointed end between his fingers without wobbling: the equivalent, writes John Ure, of tearing up a London telephone directory.

Rich enough to pay for his shooting leave, and with the boundless self-confidence of his type, he shrugged off warnings that his journey to Khiva, the recently annexed capital of what became Turkestan on the Russian border, would be highly dangerous.

Undeterred, Burnaby packed 400 cartridges, strapped a belt of gold sovereigns round his waist, and began his long sledge journey in the coldest winter in local memory. He fell asleep for a few minutes; his hands slipped from his woollen coat and he suffered severe frostbite above his wrists.

Luckily some Cossacks arrived before his hands fell off. They plunged his arms into a bowl of ice and rubbed them with spirits, just in time to restore circulation.

Burnaby pressed on, gave the Russians the slip, and provided Gladstone's administration with valuable intelligence about Russian plans. (He was later speared to death on a mission to Khartoum.) Shooting leave was, after all, spying leave, and it played to the strengths of the British character: inventiveness, ingenuity, individuality, courage, role-playing and bravery to the point of recklessness. Above all, sheer high spirits - and it is this which Ure captures in these portraits from what we would like to believe is another age.