The 'memsahibs' of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women's travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent, they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform. This new set in the Chawton House Library Women's Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives - here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions - were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women's interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women's passivity, reticence and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women's writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women's educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature. This volume includes two texts, Ann Deane, A Tour Through the Upper Provinces of Hindostan (1823) and Julia Maitland, Letters from Madras (1846).

From "Roughing it with the Men" to "Below the Border in Wartime" Mary Roberts Rinehart's The Out Trail features seven tales from her adventures in the West from fishing at Puget Sound to hiking the Bright Angel trail at the Grand Canyon. Though she was best known at the time for her mystery novels, Rinehart's travel writing, starting with her 1915 travels to the then young Glacier National Park, offers observations and insights into the fun and difficulties of early twentieth-century travel and her fellow travelers with humor and clarity of detail that makes them vivid for today's travelers.

First quality reprint of this famous travelogue. Relevant for anybody interested in Asia travels and colored plate books of the 19th century We were six white men in all - Our intention was to march from Simla due north to Le, the capital of Ladak; thence west-ward to Sree-nuggur, the capital of Kashmir; thence in a south-easterly direction via Chumba, and Kangra back to Simla, - in all, a circuit considerably over one thousand miles. This scheme was carried out in its integrity by only two of the party. For travellers who, like us, were anxious to see as much as possible in three short months, and were not disinclined to rough it, I can conceive no better route, leading us as it did through every vicissitude of Himalayan scenery, over the high table-lands of Thibetan Tartary, into the verdant vale of Kashmir, and so back through the tamer but scarcely less beautiful scenery of the lower ranges of the Himalaya, to the, tea-planted slopes of the Kangra valley, at which point the traveller may consider his wanderings in what has been called the Alpine Punjab at an end.' This excerpt from the opening of "Travels in Ladakh, Tartary, and Kashmir" by Lieutenant General Sir Henry D'Oyley Torrens offers a taste of this extraordinary book , originally published in 1862. Studio Orientalia's edition of this famous travelogue is based on the rare first edition published by Saunders Otley & Co. The text has been retyped and newly formatted according to the original, with 12 coloured plates, 2 of them folding panoramas in original size, numerous line-drawn illustrations and decorations to the text, included.

The lines, circles, ticks, hooks, dots and dashes of Pitman shorthand used by some postcard writers during the early twentieth century are obscure to most people. Could the mysterious messages contain scandalous gossip, tales of adventure or declarations of undying love? Fifty Mysterious Postcards presents fascinating examples from the 'Golden Age' of the postcard, each with a message written in the dying art of Pitman shorthand. The rules of Pitman have changed since the postcards were written and posted over 100 years ago, but careful transcription has unlocked their meaning to bring stories of penfriends, sweethearts, holidays and the First World War to life once more.

In 1866, worn out by fighting in the American Civil War, the writer Samuel Hazard arrived in Cuba to begin work on a guidebook to the island. Over a period of several months, as his health recovered, he travelled throughout what was then still a Spanish colony, observing and recording daily life. The result is one of the most complete and evocative portrayals of colonial Cuban life, written in the decade when the first concerted struggle for independence was already under way. Hazard's sympathies were clearly with the pro-independence "patriots", but his main aim was to produce a complete overview of the island's sights and customs, aimed at visitors. He is informative on hotels, restaurants, and transport and sightseeing, but is also intrigued by the people he meets and the idiosyncrasies of Cuban social life. Illustrated with hundreds of the author's own sketches, "Cuba with Pen and Pencil" takes the reader through the historic fortresses and mansions of Havana, the tropical city of Santiago de Cuba and the plantations and mountains of the island's countryside. With a keen and often quirky eye for detail, Hazard explores the sugar industry - still largely powered by slave labour - and Cuba's other economic activities. He describes the island's flora and fauna, its varied topography, and its varied social life, ranging from upper-class balls to slave compounds. First published in 1871 and now reissued with an introduction by acclaimed historian Richard Gott, "Cuba with Pen and Pencil" is a unique portrait of an island and a society on the eve of fundamental and historic change.

The past quarter-century has seen a number of biographies and anthologies on women travelers but to date there has been little comprehensive reference work done on the travellers themselves. Some of the women were eccentric, many very adventurous, some were in search of a different world. British women make up the largest portion of the book's focus--these particular adventurers being backed in many cases by family money, scientific inquiry, and the ready availability of the British seafaring tradition. Entries feature biographical information including the woman's family background, her educational history, and a brief summary of her world travels, with in many cases evocative extracts from their writings (many are literary gems).

"The lure of the high places is in your blood. The call of the mountains is a real call. The veneer, after all, is so thin. Throw off the impedimenta of civilization, the telephones, the silly conventions, the lies that pass for truth. Go out to the West. Ride slowly, not to startle the wild things. Throw out your chest and breathe; look across green valleys to wild peaks where mountain sheep stand impassive on the edge of space. Let the summer rains fall on your upturned face and wash away the memory of all that is false and petty and cruel. Then the mountains will get you. You will go back. The call is a real call." So wrote Mary Roberts Rinehart in her famous travelogue, Through Glacier Park, first published in 1916, as the already famous mystery writer introduced readers to recently minted national park and to the scenic wonders of Montana and to the adventures to be found there. Howard Eaton, an intrepid guide who had become known for his Yellowstone experience, had convinced Rinehart to make the trek to the West. Traveling three hundred miles on horseback with a group of more than forty assorted tourists of all shapes and sizes, she took in her fellow travelers, the scenery, and the travel itself with all the style and aplomb and humor of the talented fiction writer and journalist she was-and her words remain fresh and entertaining to this day.

Prize-winning Spanish author Juan Pedro Aparicio follows the route of the old narrow guage railway that runs between Bilbao and Leon, through the provinces of Vizcaya, Santander, Burgos, Palencia and Leon. The description of the train journey is illuminated by the watercolours of Jose S. Carralero and Maribol Fraguas."

"No city preserves the memory and signature of so many men. The past and the dead have here as it were, a corporate life..." Edward Thomas is now best known for the poetry he wrote between 1914 and his untimely death at Arras in 1917. But during his lifetime his reputation was based on the extraordinary body of travel writing, reviews, and critical books he produced against intense deadline pressures in order to feed his growing family. His travel books, most notably Oxford and The South Country have had an enduring appeal for all lovers the English countryside. Through these and his later poems, Thomas has come to be regarded as the quintessential English writer. And yet he was Welsh, observing and loving England as a semi-outsider. Oxford, published three years after he completed his degree, was Thomas's first major commission. In it, he gives an evocative account of Oxford's architecture, history, and customs, drawing on personal memories of undergraduate life at Lincoln College. His prose was written to accompany the paintings of Fulleylove, who shared his interest in juxtaposing Oxford's grandeur with the ordinary details of domestic life. Between them, the artist and the writer catch the beauty of this "city within the heart" at a pivotal moment in pre-war history, and give it to us as though it could last forever in that form. In a Critical Introduction, Lucy Newlyn examines the importance of Oxford as a historical record. But she also argues that it is a piece of vivid experimental prose, in which much of Thomas's later greatness is anticipated. Her analysis of his prose style shows how Thomas tries out the voices of the past, defining his own particular brand of Modernism by creating a kind of "bricolage" through allusion and imitation. Running steadily beneath the text's elaborate ventriloquism is the quiet ruminative voice of the authentic Thomas, edging ever closer to the simple speech rhythms of his lyric poems. This is the first critical edition of Oxford, giving long overdue credit to the book as an early masterpiece in the Thomas oeuvre.

"The spread of the towns, the disforesting of the hills, and other causes are conspiring to destroy many of the conditions which made the Riviera of former days so happy a resort for the lovers of Nature. But there will always be much to observe and much to study in so favoured a region." Quirky, erudite and eminently readable, the fifty-four essays comprising Riviera Nature Notes give an astonishingly clear picture of plant and animal life in the South of France at the turn of the twentieth century--not to mention a fascinating insight into the social mores of the time. A hundred years later the book is as fresh, topical and inviting as when it was first published. Preferring to remain anonymous as a naturalist, not only out of modesty but to guard the integrity of his liturgical writings, its clergyman author speaks of olives and pines, myrtles and figs, mosquitoes and rare butterflies--to name but a few of his subjects--with such passion and verve as to bring the land from the Ligurian coastline to the Maritime Alps vividly alive. Published first at the expense of Sir Thomas Hanbury, master of the famed gardens at La Mortola, Italy and benefactor of the Royal Horticultural Society's sixty-acre estate at Wisley, a second edition incorporated photographs taken by the temperamental and extravagant heiress Ellen Wilmot, in many ways a greater figure in the plant world than her close contemporary Gertrude Jekyll. Our anonymous author moved in the best horticultural and botanical circles, wore his learning lightly, and unusually for the time, spoke to the common man and the general reader on equal terms. With an engaging, sometimes acerbic, always entertaining and informative voice speaking effortlessly across the years, he will once again garner admirers among nature lovers, gardeners and travellers alike.

From the moment Karen Blixen arrived in Kenya in 1914 to manage a coffee plantation, her heart belonged to Africa. Drawn to the intense colours and ravishing landscapes, Karen Blixen spent her happiest years on the farm and her experiences and friendships with the people around her are vividly recalled in these memoirs. Out of Africa is the story of a remarkable and unconventional woman and of a way of life that has vanished for ever.

'Hand (man) wanted for long voyage in small boat. No pay, no prospects, not much pleasure.' So read the crew notice placed in the personal column of The Times by H.W. 'Bill' Tilman in the spring of 1959. This approach to selecting volunteers for a year-long voyage of 20,000 miles brought mixed seafaring experience: 'Osborne had crossed the Atlantic fifty-one times in the Queen Mary, playing double bass in the ship's orchestra'. With unclimbed ice-capped peaks and anchorages that could at best be described as challenging, the Southern Ocean island groups of Crozet and Kerguelen provided obvious destinations for Tilman and his fifty-year-old wooden pilot cutter Mischief. His previous attempt to land in the Crozet Islands had been abandoned when their only means of landing was carried away by a severe storm in the Southern Ocean. Back at Lymington, a survey of the ship uncovered serious Teredo worm damage. Tilman, undeterred, sold his car to fund the rebuilding work and began planning his third sailing expedition to the southern hemisphere. Mischief among the Penguins (1961), Tilman's account of landfalls on these tiny remote volcanic islands, bears testament to the development of his ocean navigation skills and seamanship. The accounts of the island anchorages, their snow-covered heights, geology and in particular the flora and fauna pay tribute to the varied interests and ingenuity of Mischief's crew, not least after several months at sea when food supplies needed to be eked out. Tilman's writing style, rich with informative and entertaining quotations, highlights the lessons learned with typical self-deprecating humour, while playing down the immensity of his achievements.

Peter Nasmyth has lived in and travelled extensively throughout Georgia for the last 32 years. Georgia in the Mountains of Poetry is his fascinating account of this historically rich and drama loving country, based on his travels and hundreds of wide-ranging interviews. Reprinted numerous times, it remains the only comprehensive book on Georgia's history and culture written for the general reader, now substantially revised and expanded for this new edition. Georgia - no larger than Ireland - is the most geographical diverse country in the world for its size. It borders on the Black Sea and contains the heart of the Caucasus mountains, as well as subtropical wetlands and semi-arid regions. Stone towers attest to its 3,000-year-old history, which has witnessed the thousand-year reign of the Bagratuni monarchy, the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, a bitter civil war, the celebration of its independence in 1991 and the arrival of full democracy in 2012. Yet little is known about this remarkable nation outside its borders. Georgia in the Mountains of Poetry is the first book to provide its full inner story and remains essential reading for anyone interested in this fascinating region set on the historic far borders of Europe and Asia.

In the mid-nineteenth century, as new routes opened up, a new generation of travellers embarked on excursions to India, China and Japan. Globetrotters - leisure tourists with a keen interest in experiencing authentic culture - flocked to the East, casting aside preconceptions and gravitating towards what they hoped to be the unchanged landscapes and traditions of Eastern cultures. The relics of their travels - the food they consumed and the souvenirs they brought back - allowed globetrotters to distinguish themselves from common tourists. They proudly returned with accounts that presented a global East, challenging public assumptions about the cultures they had visited and charting a journey of self-transformation through travel.

'As I studied the maps, one thing about them captured my imagination - Across this blank space was written one challenging word, "Unexplored"' In 1937 two of the twentieth century's greatest explorers set off to explore an unknown area of the Himalaya, the breath-taking Shaksgam mountains. With a team of surveyors and Sherpas, Eric Shipton and H.W. Tilman located and mapped the land around K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. It was their greatest venture, and one that paved the way for all future mountaineering in that area of the Himalaya. For Shipton and Tilman, exploration was everything, with a summit a welcome bonus, and Blank on the Map is the book that best captures their spirit of adventure. With an observant eye and keen sense of humour, Shipton tells how the expedition entered the unknown Shaksgam mountains, crossing impenetrable gorges, huge rivers and endless snow fields. There's a very human element to Shipton's dealings with his Sherpa friends, and with his Balti porters, some of whom were helpful, while some were less so. The expedition uncovers traces of ancient cultures and visits vibrant modern civilisations living during the last days of the British Empire. Only when all supplies are exhausted, their clothes in tatters and all equipment lost do the men finally return home. A mountain exploration classic.

'I felt like one who had first betrayed and then deserted a stricken friend; a friend with whom for the past fourteen years I had spent more time at sea than on land, and who, when not at sea, had seldom been out of my thoughts.' The first of the three voyages described in In Mischief's Wake gives H.W. 'Bill' Tilman's account of the final voyage and loss of Mischief, the Bristol Channel pilot cutter in which he had sailed over 100,000 miles to high latitudes in both Arctic and Antarctic waters. Back home, refusing to accept defeat and going against the advice of his surveyor, he takes ownership of Sea Breeze, built in 1899; 'a bit long in the tooth, but no more so, in fact a year less, than her prospective owner'. After extensive remedial work, his first attempt at departure had to be cut short when the crew 'enjoyed a view of the Isle of Wight between two of the waterline planks'. After yet more expense, Sea Breeze made landfall in Iceland before heading north toward the East Greenland coast in good shape and well stocked with supplies. A mere forty miles from the entrance to Scoresby Sound, Tilman's long-sought-after objective, 'a polite mutiny' forced him to abandon the voyage and head home. The following year, with a crew game for all challenges, a series of adventures on the west coast of Greenland gave Tilman a voyage he considered 'certainly the happiest', in a boat which was proving to be a worthy successor to his beloved Mischief.

This book is described as being 'in a genre all its own'. Truly it is. Simeon the cat has two ambitions. the first is to become famous, which is why he writes this book, and the second is to meet the White Rabbit. While pursuing these goals, he takes time to air his views on Oxford, Mr Bean, the internet, on how the British do not value words, and on a while host of other things. He guides us through Oxford's history, landmarks and legends, and provides an entertaining and original introduction to the city. Over-confident in his ability to reason, he enjoys talking with academics and students. All use their real names in the story - Profs of Physics and Medieval German, and postgraduate students. He creates havoc in Blackwell's, discovers an unpublished poem. by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and lays plans to take the grin off the face of the Cheshire Cat. Does he really meet the White Rabbit? It seems he does! Oxford is unique in so many ways. It is the only city in the world where one is in and out of stories all the time. Morse, Mr Bean, Bridgehead, Dickens, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter. There is no book that does the job of this one in linking story to reality. It's laugh-out-loud funny, in a dry, sixth-form-humour way. You'll love it!

The eighteenth century witnessed the publication of an unprecedented number of voyages and travels, genuine and fictional. Within a genre distinguished by its diversity, curiosity, and experimental impulses, Katrina O'Loughlin investigates not just how women in the eighteenth century experienced travel, but also how travel writing facilitated their participation in literary and political culture. She canvases a range of accounts by intrepid women, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters, Lady Craven's Journey through the Crimea to Constantinople, Eliza Justice's A Voyage to Russia, and Anna Maria Falconbridge's Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone. Moving from Ottoman courts to theatres of war, O'Loughlin shows how gender frames access to people and spaces outside Enlightenment and Romantic Britain, and how travel provides women with a powerful cultural form for re-imagining their place in the world.

The 'memsahibs' of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women's travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent, they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform. This new set in the Chawton House Library Women's Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives - here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions - were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women's interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women's passivity, reticence and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women's writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women's educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature. This volume includes 2 texts, Jemima Kindersley, Letters from the Island of Teneriffe, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, and the East Indies (1777) and Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India (1812).

The 'memsahibs' of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women's travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent, they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform. This new set in the Chawton House Library Women's Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives - here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions - were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women's interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women's passivity, reticence and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women's writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women's educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature. This second volume includes two texts, Harriet Newell, Memoirs of Mrs Harriet Newell (1815) and Eliza Fay, Original Letters from India (1817).

The 'memsahibs' of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women's travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent, they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform. This new set in the Chawton House Library Women's Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives - here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions - were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women's interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women's passivity, reticence and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women's writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women's educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature. This final volume reproduces a text by Mary Sherwood, called The Life of Mrs Sherwood (1854).

'Whether these mountains are climbed or not, smaller expeditions are a step in the right direction.' It's 1938, the British have thrown everything they've got at Everest but they've still not reached the summit. War in Europe seems inevitable; the Empire is shrinking. Still reeling from failure in 1936, the British are granted one more permit by the Tibetans, one more chance to climb the mountain. Only limited resources are available, so can a small team be assembled and succeed where larger teams have failed? H.W. Tilman is the obvious choice to lead a select team made up of some of the greatest British mountaineers history has ever known, including Eric Shipton, Frank Smythe and Noel Odell. Indeed, Tilman favours this lightweight approach. He carries oxygen but doesn't trust it or think it ethical to use it himself, and refuses to take luxuries on the expedition, although he does regret leaving a case of champagne behind for most of his time on the mountain. On the mountain, the team is cold, the weather very wintery. It is with amazing fortitude that they establish a camp six at all, thanks in part to a Sherpa going by the family name of Tensing. Tilman carries to the high camp, but exhausted he retreats, leaving Smythe and Shipton to settle in for the night. He records in his diary, 'Frank and Eric going well-think they may do it.' But the monsoon is fast approaching ...In Mount Everest 1938, first published in 1948, Tilman writes that it is difficult to give the layman much idea of the actual difficulties of the last 2,000 feet of Everest. He returns to the high camp and, in exceptional style, they try for the ridge, the route to the summit and those immense difficulties of the few remaining feet.

The most comprehensive anthology of writings by visitors to the eternal city ever compiled – witty, profound and endlessly entertaining. Drawing on French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, Scandinavian and American sources, Ronald Ridley has compiled a vivid collage-portrait of Rome through the centuries, illustrated with three hundred images and published in three elegant volumes: The Middles Ages to the Seventeenth Century, The Eighteenth Century and The Nineteenth Century. Presented here is the third volume. How did visitors arrive? Where did they stay? What were their expenses? What did they see of churches, palaces, villas and antiquities? What did they like or dislike of what they saw? What did they think of Rome in all its contemporary facets? What events did they witness? What portraits do they provide of people in Rome at the time of their visit? Excerpts from memoirs by more than two hundred visitors give a myriad fascinating insights and together provide a detailed account of Rome over nearly a millennium.

The second volume of exuberant, lively letters from legendary travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor

The first collection of letters from Patrick Leigh Fermor, Dashing for the Post, delighted critics and public alike. This second volume, More Dashing, presents a further selection of letters that exude a zest for life and adventure characteristic of the man known to all as 'Paddy'.

Paddy's exuberant letters contain glimpses of the great and the good: a chance conversation with the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, when Paddy opens the wrong door, or a glass of ouzo under the pine trees with Harold Macmillan. They describe encounters with such varied figures as Jackie Onassis, Camilla Parker-Bowles, Oswald Mosley and Peter Mandelson, while also relating adventures with the humble: a 'pick-nick' with the stonemasons at Kardamyli, or a drunken celebration in the Cretan mountains with his old comrades from the Resistance, most of them simple shepherds and goatherds. Paddy was at ease in any company - unfailingly charming, boyish, gentle and fun.

Patrick Leigh Fermor has long been recognised as one of the greatest travel writers of his time. Nowhere is his restless curiosity and delight in language more dazzlingly displayed than in his letters, skilfully edited in this collection by Adam Sisman.