Sixteen months on a small Greek island? Not the holiday of a lifetime, but the start of anthropologist Margaret E. Kenna's involvement with the residents of Anafi and its migrant community in Athens. Greek Island Life gives a vivid and engaging account of research on Anafi in the 1960s, and is based on letters, progress reports, field-notes and diary entries made at the time. Since then the author has returned to the island many times and her later impressions and knowledge are integrated into the earlier texts. The islanders, who once regarded themselves to be so remote as to be 'far from God', are now making a living from tourism, marketing their island as an unspoilt idyll. Anyone interested in Greece and travel will find this book illuminating and captivating, as will students and teachers of anthropology, sociology, modern history, travel writing and Modern Greek studies. 'In the whole of the Cycladic and Sporadic groups there exists no island so remote in its solitude as Anafi' wrote the traveller Theodore Bent in the early 1880s: 'it is a mere speck in the waves in the direction of Rhodes and Crete, where no one ever goes, and the 1000 inhabitants of the one village are as isolated as if they dwelt on an archipelago in the Pacific.' So Anafi remained until the mid 1960s when Margaret E. Kenna stepped ashore to begin a memorable stay, and a lifetime's connection, described in this lovely book. Full of wonderful observation, scrupulously honest, it would be compelling simply as a travel book, but it is much more: it is a landmark study of the Greek island world on the eve of the huge changes that would transform Greece by mass tourism from the early 1970s, and it is all the more poignant now given the crises currently engulfing the country. All lovers of Greece will relish and admire this book for its insight, its realism and its humanity: a portrait of a world which is almost gone, but as Margaret Kenna shows in her updates, not quite yet. Michael Wood, Professor of Public History, Manchester University, and broadcaster This wonderful book counters the common accusation that anthropologists do such interesting things and then write boring books about them. This is a unique document, a narrative of fieldwork, written not retrospectively but in the actual ethnographic present, in lucid and lyrical prose worthy of Jane Austen. We the readers are invited to participate in the unfolding of events from Kenna's arrival to her departure, sharing in the first puzzles and initial descriptions of strangers who, by the end, become familiar figures and friends. The narrative confirms how, contrary to the scientistic tradition of advancing hypotheses, the role of chance is crucial to anthropological practice: as in a detective novel, once strange things are gradually given sense. Professor Judith Okely, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, Hull University

Jan Jacob Slauerhoff (1898-1936) was a ship's doctor serving in south-east Asia, and is one of the most important twentieth-century Dutch-language writers. His 1934 novel Adrift in the Middle Kingdom (Het leven op aarde), is an epic sweep of narrative that takes the reader from 1920s Shanghai to a forgotten city beyond the Great Wall of China. Slauerhoff's narrator is a Belfast ship's radio operator, desperate to escape the sea, who travels inland on a gun-runner's mission. He moves through extraordinary settings of opium salons, the house of a Cantonese watch-mender, the siege of Shanghai, the great flood on the western plains, and the discovery of oil by the uncomprehending overlord in the hidden city of Chungking. The fantasy ending transforms the novel from travelogue and adventure to existential meditation. But running like a thread of darkness through the story is opium, from poppy head harvesting to death through addiction. This translation by David McKay, winner of the 2018 Vondel Prize, is the first English edition of Slauerhoff's most accessible and enthralling novel. The Introduction is by Slauerhoff expert Arie Pos and Wendy Gan of the University of Hong Kong.

Within 'Sirens and Seriemas', Paul Brooke explores the wild places of Brazil through photography and poetry. A former biologist and naturalist, Brooke travelled the Amazon and Pantanal regions of Brazil studying culture, history and natural history. The poems address pressing environmental issues such as deforestation, extinction, overhunting, overpopulation, urbanization and wildness. The photographs chronicle the amazing beauty and danger, the culture of Amazonian peoples and multi-colored landscapes.

Europe has been widely acclaimed as among the finest achievements of 'one of our greatest living writers' (The Times). A personal appreciation, fuelled by five decades of journeying, this is Jan Morris at her best - at once magisterial and particular, whimsical and profound. It is a matchless portrait of a continent.

At the height of his career, around the time he was working on Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens wrote a series of sketches, mostly set in London, which he collected as The Uncommercial Traveller. In the persona of 'the Uncommercial', Dickens wanders the city streets and brings London, its inhabitants, commerce and entertainment vividly to life. Sometimes autobiographical, as childhood experiences are interwoven with adult memories, the sketches include visits to the Paris Morgue, the Liverpool docks, a workhouse, a school for poor children, and the theatre. They also describe the perils of travel, including seasickness, shipwreck, the coming of the railways, and the wretchedness of dining in English hotels and restaurants. The work is quintessential Dickens, with each piece showcasing his imaginative writing style, his keen observational powers, and his characteristic wit. In this edition Daniel Tyler explores Dickens's fascination with the city and the book's connections with concerns evident in his fiction: social injustice, human mortality, a fascination with death and the passing of time. Often funny, sometimes indignant, always exuberant, The Uncommercial Traveller is a revelatory encounter with Dickens, and the Victorian city he knew so well.

Until the 1880s, British travellers to Arabia were for the most part wealthy dilettantes who could fund their travels from private means. With the advent of an Imperial presence in the region, as the British seized power in Egypt, the very nature of travel to the Middle East changed. Suddenly, ordinary men and women found themselves visiting the region as British influence increased. Missionaries, soldiers and spies as well as tourists and explorers started to visit the area, creating an ever bigger supply of writers, and market for their books. In a similar fashion, as the Empire receded in the wake of World War II, so did the whole tradition of Middle East travel writing. In this elegantly crafted book, James Canton examines over one hundred primary sources, from forgotten gems to the classics of T E Lawrence, Thesiger and Philby. He analyses the relationship between Empire and author, showing how the one influenced the other, leading to a vast array of texts that might never have been produced had it not been for the ambitions of Imperial Britain. This work makes for essential reading for all of those interested in the literature of Empire, travel writing and the Middle East.

The small, handwritten volume which is Robert Marten's diary of his travels in East Anglia is carefully conserved in the Norfolk Record Office. Marten writes of Great Yarmouth, where he landed after the journey by steamer from London, of Norwich as the county town of Norfolk and of Cromer, where he and his family enjoyed several days exploring. His picture of the county in September 1825, combined with the detail in his pencil sketches, reveals an early 19th century world to us. Editor Elizabeth Larby has carefully annotated the text, providing a context to further our understanding of the journey and the age.

Sybille Bedford once wrote that travel writing is inseparable from the writer's tastes, idiosyncrasies, and general temperament - it is what happens to him when he is confronted with a column, a bird, a sage, a cheat, a riot; wine, fruit, dirt; the delay in the dirt, the failing airplane. 'Pleasures and Landscapes' is what happened to Mrs Bedford when, at the peak of her literary powers, she traveled through France, Italy, and the rest of Europe for Vogue, Esquire, and other magazines - eight classic essays that secure her a place at the table with A.J. Liebling and M.F.K. Fisher.

'The best conceivable guide to the city' - an essential cultural history for all visitors of Florence The rich and glorious past of one of the best loved cities in the world, Florence, is brought vividly to life for today's visitor in this collection which draws on letters, diaries and memoirs of travellers to Florence and the Florentines themselves. Of all Italian cities, Florence has always had the strongest English accent: the Goncourt brothers in 1855 called it 'ville tout anglaise'. Though that accent is diminished now, Florence remains for the English-speaking traveller what it always has been - one of the best loved, and most visited, of cities. In this Traveller's Reader, Florence's rich and glorious past is brought vividly to life for the tourist of today through the medium of letters, diaries and memoirs of travellers to Florence from past centuries and of the Florentines themselves. The extracts chosen by cultural historain Edward Chaney include: Boccaccio on the Black Death; Vasari on the building of Giotto's Campanile; an eye-witness account of the installation of Michaelangelo's 'David'; the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning at the Casa Guidi; and D. H. Lawrence and Dylan Thomas on twentieth-century Florentine society. Sir Harold Acton's introduction provides a concise history of the city from its origins, through its zenith as a prosperous city state which, under the Medici, gave birth to the Renaissance, and up to the Arno's devastating flood in 1966. Sir Harold Acton, man of letters, historian, aesthete, novelist and poet, spent most of his life in Florence. Among his best-known books is The Last Medici, Memoirs of an Aesthete.

In the summer of 1883 Belgian travel writer Jules Leclercq spent ten days on horseback in Yellowstone, the world's first national park, exploring myriad natural wonders: astonishing geysers, majestic waterfalls, the vast lake, and the breathtaking canyon. He also recorded the considerable human activity, including the rampant vandalism. Leclercq's account of his travels is itself a small marvel blending natural history, firsthand impressions, scientific lore, and anecdote. Along with his observations on the park's long-rumoured fountains of boiling water and mountains of glass, Leclercq describes camping near geysers, washing clothes in a bubbling hot spring, and meeting such diverse characters as local guides and tourists from the United States and Europe. Notables including former president Ulysses S. Grant and then-president Chester A. Arthur were also in the park that summer to inaugurate the newly completed leg of the Northern Pacific Railroad. A sensation in Europe, the book was never published in English. This deft translation at long last makes available to English-speaking readers a masterpiece of western American travel writing that is a fascinating historical document in its own right.

In 1598 merchants of the City of London paid for a Present to be given by Queen Elizabeth to Sultan Mehmet III of Turkey. In return the merchants hoped to secure trading concessions, and the Virgin Queen to turn the Sultan's military might on her Spanish enemies. The Present was a carved, painted and gilded cabinet about sixteen feet high, six feetwideand five feet deep. It contained a chiming clock with jewel-encrusted moving figures combined with an automatic organ, which could play tunes on its own for six hours - or by hand to the point of exhaustion. The Present was dismantled and dispatched on a merchant ship early in 1599. It took six months to get from London to Constantinople. With it went four craftsmen. They were Thomas Dallam the organ builder, John Harvey the engineer, Michael Watson the carpenter and Rowland Buckett the painter. Dallam was just twenty four years old. On their odyssey they encountered storms, volcanoes, exotic animals, foreign food, good wine, pirates, brigands, Moors, Turks, Greeks, Jews, beautiful women, barbarous men, kings and pashas, armies on the march, janissaries, eunuchs, slaves, dwarves and finally the most powerful man in the known world, the Great Turk himself. Faithfully translated into modern prose, unembellished and unedited, this illuminating historical source reads as if its Elizabethan author were alive today.

A hard-headed but often hilarious guide to the pleasures and pitfalls of travel by one of Britain's favourite writers.

A remarkable collection of charming and eloquent letters that contain the seeds of Tocqueville's later masterful account of American democracy Young Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in the United States for the first time in May 1831, commissioned by the French government to study the American prison system. For the next nine months he and his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, traveled and observed not only prisons but also the political, economic, and social systems of the early republic. Along the way, they frequently reported back to friends and family members in France. This book presents the first translation of the complete letters Tocqueville wrote during that seminal journey, accompanied by excerpts from Beaumont's correspondence that provide details or different perspectives on the places, people, and American life and attitudes the travelers encountered. These delightful letters provide an intimate portrait of the complicated, talented Tocqueville, who opened himself without prejudice to the world of Jacksonian America. Moreover, they contain many of the impressions and ideas that served as preliminary sketches for Democracy in America, his classic account of the American democratic system that remains an important reference work to this day. Accessible, witty, and charming, the letters Tocqueville penned while in America are of major interest to general readers, scholars, and students alike.

West Africa in the 1970s was a volatile melange of old and new; of aspiration, corruption, power and influence. In its midst, Ian Mathie laboured in his role as a water engineer to help improve the lives of ordinary people. His work brought him in contact with presidents, kings, emperors, chiefs and a succession of extraordinary characters. Circumstances contrived to place him at dinners with four heads of state whose rule had immense impact, positive and negative, on their countries and on West and Central Africa: Mobutu of Zaire, Traore of Mali, Senghor of Senegal and Eyadema of Togo. In 'Supper with the President', he recalls the events and the insights they gave him, interweaving those experiences with true stories of other extraordinary brushes with sorcery, slavery, wildlife conservation, desert travel and a jail-break that could only happen in Africa.

Unexpectedly in 1958, an irreverent British journalist and Australian cartoonist duo were granted visas to visit Communist China at its most closed and inscrutable. Emerging from the writings of Kirwan Ward and the drawings of Paul Rigby is a picture of China at a key moment in its history--still feeding off the exhilaration of the creation of "People's China" in 1949 and full of optimism and blind idealism. A rich collection of insights and observations tinged with skepticism and good humor, this record offers a western perspective of China during Mao Tse-tung's leadership.