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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > Classic travel writing
In Love with Paris is an irresistible combination of 50 mouth-watering sweet and savoury recipes and heart-melting love stories. Take a culinary walk through the city of love and its most romantic spots, and enjoy classic French cuisine, from croque madame and coq au vin, to madeleines and lemon tarts. Immerse yourself in the city that inspired writers and photographers like Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald and Victor Doisneau, and visit the iconic locations of films like The Lovers on the Bridge and Amelie. In Love with Paris will make you fall in love with Paris - again and again.
In 1973, the Afghans still had a King who ruled from a palace in Kabul with his own resident court of musicians when Veronica set up home in Herat. This Afghan city sat close to the Persian frontier and was fully cognizant of its glorious history as the capital of a once vast Central Asian Empire. Veronica was not a casual traveler but a young musician married to a scholar. She was determined to make use of her time in Afghanistan and break out of the charmed circle of the expatriate academic and make real friendships with local women. The tentative story, the growth in these very different friendships, takes the reader into a rare, deep, and privileged insight into the hidden world of Afghan female society. This is more than enough to make this book remarkable, but it has an afterlife of its own. For a Communist coup, then the Russian invasion, a long guerrilla war of Resistance is followed by Civil War and the rise of the Taliban. Veronica was separated from her friends: feared the worst, sought to assist but was also aware that contact from a westerner could be lethal to them. Then a fragile peace allowed her to meet them again and pick up their stories. It is a most exceptional work, which reads like a novel.
'All those interested in South Asia and its complex politics and culture should read this book' - Pankaj Mishra The demise of Pakistan - a country with a reputation for volatility, brutality and radical Islam - is regularly predicted. But things rarely turn out as expected, as renowned journalist Declan Walsh knows well. Over a decade covering the country, his travels took him from the raucous port of Karachi to the gilded salons of Lahore to the lawless frontier of Waziristan, encountering Pakistanis whose lives offer a compelling portrait of this land of contradictions. He meets a crusading lawyer who risks her life to fight for society's most marginalised, taking on everyone including the powerful military establishment; an imperious chieftain spouting poetry at his desert fort; a roguish politician waging a mini-war against the Taliban; and a charismatic business tycoon who moves into politics and seems to be riding high - till he takes up the wrong cause. Lastly, Walsh meets a spy whose orders once involved following him, and who might finally be able to answer the question that haunts him: why the Pakistanis suddenly expelled him from their country. Intimate and complex, unravelling the many mysteries of state and religion, this formidable book offers an arresting account of life in a country that, often as not, seems to be at war with itself. 'Thrilling, big-hearted' - Memphis Barker, Daily Telegraph 'Sets a new benchmark for non-fiction about the complex palace of mirrors that is Pakistan' - William Dalrymple
Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe is an interdisciplinary collection of 24 essays which brings together leading international scholarship on Hakluyt and his work. Best known as editor of The Principal Navigations (1589; expanded 1598-1600), Hakluyt was a key figure in promoting English colonial and commercial expansion in the early modern period. He also translated major European travel texts, championed English settlement in North America, and promoted global trade and exploration via a Northeast and Northwest Passage. His work spanned every area of English activity and aspiration, from Muscovy to America, from Africa to the Near East, and India to China and Japan, providing up-to-date information and establishing an ideological framework for English rivalries with Spain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands. This volume resituates Hakluyt in the political, economic, and intellectual context of his time. The genre of the travel collection to which he contributed emerged from Continental humanist literary culture. Hakluyt adapted this tradition for nationalistic purposes by locating a purported history of 'English' enterprise that stretched as far back as he could go in recovering antiquarian records. The essays in this collection advance the study of Hakluyt's literary and historical resources, his international connections, and his rhetorical and editorial practice. The volume is divided into 5 sections: 'Hakluyt's Contexts'; 'Early Modern Travel Writing Collections'; 'Editorial Practice'; 'Allegiances and Ideologies: Politics, Religion, Nation'; and 'Hakluyt: Rhetoric and Writing'. The volume concludes with an account of the formation and ethos of the Hakluyt Society, founded in 1846, which has continued his project to edit travel accounts of trade, exploration, and adventure.
Eastward bound looks at travel and travellers in the medieval period. An international range of distinguished contributors offer discussions on a wide range of themes, from the experiences of Crusaders on campaign, to the lives of pilgrims and missionaries and traders in the Middle East. It examines their modes of travel, equipment and methods of navigation, and considers their expectations and experiences en route. The contributions also look at the variety of motives - public and private - behind the decision to travel eastwards to lands of strange and unfamiliar peoples. Other essays look at the attitudes of Middle-Eastern rulers to their visitors. In so doing they provide a valuable perspective and insight into the behaviour of the Europeans and non-Europeans alike. There have been few such accessible volumes, covering such a broad range of material for the reader. The book will be of use to students and scholars involved in the history, literature and historical geography of the period.
A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's fascinating guide to Europe's rail network. Bradshaw's descriptive railway handbook of Europe was originally published in 1913 and was the inspiration behind Michael Portillo's BBC television series 'Great Continental Railway Journeys'. It is divided into three sections: timetables for services covering the continent; short guides to the best places to see and to stay in each city; and a wealth of advertisements and ephemeral materials concerning hotels, restaurants and services that might be required by the early twentieth century rail traveller. This beautifully illustrated facsimile edition offers a fascinating glimpse of Europe and of a transport network that was shortly devastated by the greatest war the world had ever seen.
This study examines and explains how British explorers visualized the African interior in the latter part of the nineteenth century, providing the first sustained analysis of the process by which this visual material was transformed into the illustrations in popular travel books. At that time, central Africa was, effectively, a blank canvas for Europeans, unknown and devoid of visual representations. While previous works have concentrated on exploring the stereotyped nature of printed imagery of Africa, this study examines the actual production process of images and the books in which they were published in order to demonstrate how, why, and by whom the images were manipulated. Thus, the main focus of the work is not on the aesthetic value of pictures, but in the activities, interaction, and situations that gave birth to them in both Africa and Europe.
First published in 1937 this is a collection of articles written
by the author under the pseudonym 'Waseda Eisaku' for the Japan
Tourist Bureau's magazine over twenty five years. Intended to
satisfy the intellectual curiosity of cultivated tourists from
abroad by giving the insider's view of all things Japanese, it was
published as a book just before the outbreak of World War II. Writing in the first person, Katsumata becomes both guide and confidante, writing about his own travel experiences in Japan and about Japanese customs and practices that interest him, such as traditional incense ceremonies, or fishing with rod and creel. This personal approach results in an unusual selection of topics and itineraries including tray landscapes, old Japanese clocks, hot springs, Japanese humour, sumo wrestling, pines in Japanese scenery, the Japanese sun flag and Buddhist temple bells. The author not only describes, but draws the reader into his own experiences - his joy on buying an antiquarian book he cannot really afford, the monotony he feels when travelling too long through snowy landscapes, the delight he takes in telling you that the best bait for carp fishing is sweet potato. Katsumata's unconventional choice of subjects and his informal and individualistic writing style make this a refreshingly different guide to Japan, and a valuable record of the period in which it was written.
This study examines and explains how British explorers
visualized the African interior in the latter part of the
nineteenth century, providing the first sustained analysis of the
process by which this visual material was transformed into the
illustrations in popular travel books. At that time, central Africa
was, effectively, a blank canvas for Europeans, unknown and devoid
of visual representations. While previous works have concentrated on exploring the stereotyped nature of printed imagery of Africa, this study examines the actual production process of images and the books in which they were published in order to demonstrate how, why, and by whom the images were manipulated. Thus, the main focus of the work is not on the aesthetic value of pictures, but in the activities, interaction, and situations that gave birth to them in both Africa and Europe.
George Sand recounts the story of her 1838 winter in Majorca, a winter she passed in the company of Frederick Chopin. She describes the natural beauties of Majorca as well as the rumblings of approaching war.
Part of a seven-volume facsimile set, this volume comprises firsthand accounts of France in the 1790s. It includes Helen Maria Williams' letters which narrate the fall of Robespierre in 1794 and her 1798 book on Switzerland which comments sceptically on the necessary coexistence of liberty with peace.
Mary Montagu was one of the most extraordinary characters in the world. She was a self-educated intellectual, a free spirit, a radical, a feminist but also an entitled aristocrat and a society wit with powerful friends at court. In 1716 she travelled across Europe to take up residence in Istanbul as the wife of the British ambassador. Her letters remain as fresh as the day they were penned: enchanted by her discoveries of the life of Turkish women behind the veil, by Arabic poetry and by contemporary medical practices - including inoculation. For two years she lovingly observed Ottoman society as a participant, with affection, intelligence and an astonishing lack of prejudice.
This seven-volume facsimile set comprises first-hand accounts of France in the 1790s. Helen Maria William's letters narrate the fall of Robespierre in 1794 and her 1798 book on Switzerland comments sceptically on the necessary coexistence of liberty with peace. Charlotte West (who, like Williams, celebrated the fall of the Bastille but was later imprisoned by the Republic) records the corruption, paranoia and violence of the Terror both in the provinces and in Paris. All texts, the majority of which have never been republished, are reproduced in full, augmented by a substantial general introduction to each set, headnotes, endnotes, and a consolidated index in the final volume. Selected for their rarity, the texts are drawn from the unparalleled Chawton House Library collection; each facsimile page has been digitally cleaned and enhanced, significantly improving on the quality and legibility of the original.
This largely unknown travel book, written by a sporting and hunting enthusiast in 1896, recalls his journey with his wife and two dachshunds in what was then a largely unknown part of Europe. Not even Thomas Cook had conducted tours east of Trieste, and our two travelers were exploring territory less well known to the Victorian traveler at the time than Egypt or Brazil.
First published between 1926-1931, with the invaluable addition of introductions and explanatory notes, maps and appendices, this series makes available in English inaccessible texts of travel from around the globe. 'The variety of the Broadway Travellers becomes more remarkable and refreshing with every new addition to the series. It is possible to range from Bristol to Darien, from China to Peru and to pick a Puritan, a Moslem, a Jesuit or a footman for one's guide. The English denounce the Spanish, the Spanish watch the French, and the Portuguese fight the Dutch. The drama of the three great centuries of discovery - the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth - are revealed by the shrewdest of observers' - The New Statesman.
First published in 1930. The wandering Jew is a very real character
in the great drama of history. He has travelled as nomad and
settler, as fugitive and conqueror, as exile and colonist and as
merchant and scholar. Of necessity bilingual and therefore the
master of many languages, the Jew was the ideal commercial
traveller and interpreter.
First published in 1927. John Macdonald (1741-96) was born, and
died, a Scottish Highlander. First published at the time of the
French Revolution, these memoirs of his days in service provide a
rich panorama of life in the company of blind fiddlers,
maid-servants, the Scottish aristocracy, soldiers, historians,
Oriental Princes, servants of the East India Company and men of
great wealth, including James Coutts the banker. In 1768 - as the
result of an errand - it fell to Macdonald to witness the death of
Laurence Sterne.
First published in 1928.
When first published in 1928, Herbert's work enjoyed immediate
success. The narrative is of considerable importance from an
historical point of view, as it gives the only detailed account of
the first English embassy to Persia. It also paints a graphic
picture of the Perisa and the Persians in the early part of the
seventeenth century, with vivid and extensive descriptions of the
towns of Abbas, Lar, Shiraz, Persepolis, Isfahan, Ashraf, Tehran,
Qazvin, Qum and Kashan. |
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