Dutch Sailmaker and sailor Jan Struys' (c.1629-c.1694) account of his various overseas travels became a bestseller after its first publication in Amsterdam in 1676, and was later translated into English, French, German and Russian. This new book depicts the story of its author's life as well as the first singular analysis of the Struys text.

Smelling the Breezes is an inspiring adventure, that throws down a gauntlet about what can be achieved in a family holiday. Rather than give a leaving party, Ralph and Molly Izzard had their own plans about how to say goodbye to their home in the Middle East. They would walk the three-hundred mile spine of the Lebanese mountains, camping where ever they stopped with their four children, two donkeys and Elias (their gardener-nursemaid-friend) as their sole travelling companions.

When Dreams Collide is Nicholas Allan's intimate pilgrimage across the former states of Yugoslavia. Shedding the received knowledge of headlines, he explores the splintered co-evolution of these lands over the last ten centuries, guided by the inimitable Rebecca West's masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Written 80 years in the past, West's account serves as a fascinating reference for the optimistic interwar years of the 20th century between the Ottoman decline and the Nazi onset. The evolving balancing act of Tito's Yugoslav experiment and the atrocities following its break-up were still to come. Collapsing empires and proud young nations, monasteries and mosques, brotherhood, hatred, war, music, frescoes, food, costume, people, mountains, rivers and seas, the distant rumbles of the centuries take many forms. At a turning point in his own life, Allan is drawn to explore this complex area, through the lens of his part Eastern European heritage. He records personal encounters and richly drawn characters interwoven with history and art, politics and religion (too often one and the same). Enhanced with delightful hand-drawn maps of the Balkans including Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. 73 informative photograph's showing some the areas key historical figures including Ibrahim Rugova, Hitler, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, Tito, Draza Mihailovic, Slobodan Milosevic, Alecksandar Vucic, Alija Izetbegovic, Radovan Karadzic, Ante Pavelic, Franjo Tudjman, and Fitzroy Maclean.

A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers of England and Wales. In the Victorian era, the name Bradshaw became synonymous with reliable information on travelling the nation's blossoming network of railways. Published in 1904, Canals and Navigable Rivers was the first guide to planning journeys on the inland waterways of England and Wales. Noting bridges, locks, distances and commercial use, it explores the routes, operation and history of the network, and gives commentary on the areas through which it passed. Compiled at a time when the railways had largely supplanted the waterways, it paints a fascinating portrait of the Edwardian canal system as it began to fall into gentle decay. This facsimile edition of the original book now offers a different perspective for canal boaters and walkers, and gives invaluable information about waterways now lost.

Wayward son of a respected clergyman, by twenty-two, Jack Keane had seen the world. It only remained for him to visit the forbidden cities of Makkah and Madinah, and his chance came when he steps ashore in the Red Sea port of Jiddah. Disguised as a pilgrim he joins a caravan to Islam's holiest cities. Stoned in Makkah, knifed on the way to Madinah, Keane witnesses death and suffering in the desert, as he and his fellow-pilgrims are menaced by predatory desert tribes. His account and the mysterious affair of the "Lady Venus", who, Keane alleged, was an Englishwoman stranded in Makkah at the time of his visit, created a sensation in England earning him some notoriety and helping to publicise his first two books, Six Months in Meccah and My Journey to Medinah. These are here republished for the first time since the 1880s. William Facey's Introduction tells the story of Keane's life, provides a critical appraisal of his journey, and places his account of the pilgrimage in the context of other travellers to Islam's holy places. The comprehensive glossary, index and map which accompany this single volume will assist and guide readers as they join Keane on his remarkable journey. Today, with the spotlight turned on the region and its religion, Keane's account represents a prescient reflection of Western attitudes of the time towards Islam and the Arab world.

The Duke of Pirajno arrived in North Africa in 1924. For the next eighteen years his experiences as a doctor in Libya, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somaliland, provided him with opportunities and experiences rarely given to a European. He brings us stories of noble chieftains and celebrated courtesans, of Berber princes and Tuareg entertainers, of giant elephants, and a lioness who fell in love with the author.

In 1960 the government of Trinidad invited V. S. Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his impressions. In this classic of modern travel writing he has created a deft and remarkably prescient portrait of Trinidad and four adjacent Caribbean societies-countries haunted by the legacies of slavery and colonialism and so thoroughly defined by the norms of Empire that they can scarcely believe that the Empire is ending.
In The Middle Passage, Naipaul watches a Trinidadian movie audience greeting Humphrey Bogart's appearance with cries of "That is man " He ventures into a Trinidad slum so insalubrious that the locals call it the Gaza Strip. He follows a racially charged election campaign in British Guiana (now Guyana) and marvels at the Gallic pretension of Martinique society, which maintains the fiction that its roads are extensions of France's "routes nationales." And throughout he relates the ghastly episodes of the region's colonial past and shows how they continue to inform its language, politics, and values. The result is a work of novelistic vividness and dazzling perspicacity that displays Naipaul at the peak of his powers.

A scholarly edition of a work by Tobias Smollett. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This summer holiday vintage classic exploring the mystery of a buried Cornish hotel invites us to solve the puzzle as detectives: perfect for Agatha Christie fans, with a dash of Richard Osman ... 'I am loving it!' Nigella Lawson 'Hilarious and perceptive ... Perfect.' Daily Mail 'Entertaining, beautifully written, and profound.' Tracy Chevalier 'Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny ... A feast indeed.' Elizabeth Bowen 'Kennedy is not only a romantic but an anarchist.' Anita Brookner 'Oh boy, what a treat; wonderfully sharp and funny ... Page-turningly good!' Lissa Evans 'So full of pleasure that you could be forgiven for not seeing how clever it is.' Cathy Rentzenbrink (foreword) Cornwall, Midsummer 1947. Pendizack Manor Hotel is buried in the rubble of a collapsed cliff. Seven guests have perished, but is it murder, and what brought this strange assembly together for a moonlit feast before this Act of God - or Man? Over the week before the landslide, we meet the hotel guests in all their eccentric glory: and as friendships form and romances blossom, sins are revealed, and the cliff cracks widen .. Reader Reviews: 'One of the best books I have ever read ... Viva Ms. Kennedy, you were truly marvellous!' ***** 'The best book I've ever read. Yes, I know that's a big statement! Kennedy is quickly becoming my all-time favorite author ... A first-rate literary genius.' ***** 'This is bar none, one of the best books I have ever read.' ***** 'Offers us the chance to solve a very unusual kind of mystery ... An unexpectedly engaging literary game.' **** 'A magnificent rediscovery ... Kennedy's masterpiece is a searing and unflinching look at postwar England ... Elegantly and tartly written, this smart and haunting novel offers one of the most unforgettable endings ... A brilliant and moving literary feast to be enjoyed without any moderation! ***** 'I'm longing to read this again! Clever Kennedy! Is it a thriller? Is it a morality play or an exploration of divine justice? Or is it a family/village saga and maybe even a romance? ... Terrifically readable with a marvellous cast.' ***** 'Such a good idea, and brilliantly executed ... I was unable to stop reading, absorbed completely in the company of the motley group. It's almost like you're eavesdropping on them. After finishing it, I find myself still thinking about it ... A fabulous read.' ***** 'One of my favorite kinds of books: a forgotten treasure..' *****

First published in 1985, this is a history of the Grand Tour, undertaken by young men in the eighteenth century to complete their education - a tour usually to France, Italy and Switzerland, and sometimes encompassing Germany. Rather than being another popular treatment of the theme, this is a scholarly analysis of the motives, purposes, activities and achievements of those who made the Grand Tour. The book considers to what extent the Grand Tour did fulfil its theoretical educational function, or whether travellers merely parroted the observations of their guidebooks. It also indicates the importance of the Grand Tour in introducing foreign customs into Britain and extending the cosmopolitanism of the European upper classes.

A collection of the greatest women's travel writing selected by journalist and presenter Mariella Frostrup. From Constantinople to Crimea; from Antarctica to the Andes. Throughout history adventurous women have made epic, record-breaking journeys under perilous circumstances. Whether escaping constricted societies back home or propelled by a desire for independence, footloose females have ventured to the four corners of the earth and recorded their exploits for posterity. For too long their triumphs have been overshadowed by those of their male counterparts, whose honourable failures make bigger news. In curating this collection of first-hand accounts, broadcaster, writer and traveller Mariella Frostrup puts female explorers back on the map. Her selection includes explorers from the 1700s to the present day, from iconic heroines to lesser-known eccentrics, celebrating 300 years of wild women and their amazing adventures over land, sea and air. Reviews for Wild Women: 'A stirring whistle-stop tour, led by women who often risked disapproval in leaving home to roam the world' Vanity Fair 'Like any good travel book, Wild Women succeeds in casting the reader's mind off on journeys of its own, inspiring fresh plans and what the Germans call Fernweh, or a longing for faraway places' TLS 'Required reading for anyone who assumed that 'the road less travelled' was a solely masculine preserve' Sunday Independent

Over twenty years ago, Sven Lindqvist, one of the great pioneers of a new kind of experiential history writing, set out across Central Africa. Obsessed with a single line from Conrad's The Heart of Darkness - Kurtz's injunction to 'Exterminate All the Brutes' - he braided an account of his experiences with a profound historical investigation, revealing to the reader with immediacy and cauterizing force precisely what Europe's imperial powers had exacted on Africa's peoples over the course of the preceding two centuries. Shocking, humane, crackling with imaginative energies and moral purpose, Exterminate All the Brutes stands as an impassioned, timeless classic. It is essential reading for anybody ready to come to terms with the brutal, racist history on which Europe built its wealth.

This is the first book of its kind to include extensive analysis of the travelogues of Baghdad in relation to historiography. This book contains analysis of the stages of travel writing in general and the objectives of the writers, which makes it appealing for people who are keen to learn about the travelogues worldwide. The research in this book encompasses a number of disciplines, including urban history, architecture, literature, travel writing, history of Baghdad, Islamic studies, heritage and conservation. Because of this variety it would appeal to many academics from different backgrounds. Apart from academics, this book would appeal to other people who are interested in history, literature, Arabic, Islamic cities, and learning in general. Some photos and diagrams that are used in this book are taken from original sources that have been rarely published before.

Chloe Chard assembles fascinating passages from late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century accounts of travel in Italy, by Northern Europeans, writing in English (or, in some cases, translated into English at the time); 'Tristes Plaisirs' includes writings by Charles Dupaty, Maria Graham, Anna Jameson, Sydney Morgan, Henry Matthews and Hester Lynch Piozzi. The extracts often focus on the labile moods that contribute to the 'triste plaisir' of travelling (as Madame de Stael termed it): moods such as restlessness, anxiety, exhaustion, animal exuberance, sexual excitement and piqued curiosity. The introduction considers some of these responses in relation to the preoccupations and rhetorical strategies of travel writing during the Romantic period and introductory commentaries examine the ways in which the passages take up a series of themes, around which the five chapters are ordered: 'Pleasure', 'Rising and sinking in sublime places', 'Danger and destabilization', 'Art, unease and life', and 'Gastronomy, Gusto and the Geography of the Haunted'. -- .

In 1951 the Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston left grey, post-war London for Greece. Settling first on the tiny island of Kalymnos, then Hydra, their plan was to live simply and focus on their writing, away from the noise of the big city. The result is two of Charmian Clift's best known and most loved books, the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus. Mermaid Singing relays the culture shock and the sheer delight of their first year on the tiny sponge-fishing island of Kalymnos. Clift paints an evocative picture of the characters and sun-drenched rhythms of traditional life, long before backpackers and mass tourism descended. On Hydra, featured in the companion volume, Peel Me a Lotus, Clift and Johnston became the centre of an informal community of artists and writers including the then unknown Leonard Cohen who lodged with them, and his future girlfriend Marianne Ihlen.

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book brings together theories of spatiality and mobility with a study of travel writing in the Victorian period to suggest that 'idleness' is an important but neglected condition of subjectivity in that era. Contrary to familiar stereotypes of 'the Victorians' as characterized by speed, work, and mechanized travel, this books asserts a counter-narrative in which certain writers embraced idleness in travel as a radical means to 're-subjectification' and the assertion of a 'late-Romantic' sensibility. Attentive to the historical and literary continuities between 'Romantic' and 'Victorian', the book reconstructs the Victorian discourse on idleness. It draws on an interdisciplinary range of theorists and brings together a fresh selection of accounts viewed through the lens of cultural studies as well as accounts of publication history and author biography. Travel texts from different genres (by writers such as Anna Mary Howitt, Jerome K. Jerome and George Gissing) are brought together as representing the different facets of the spectrum of idleness in the Victorian context.

Evliya Celebi was the 17th century's most diligent, adventurous, and honest recorder, whose puckish wit and humor are laced throughout his ten-volume masterpiece. This brand new translation brings Evliya sparklingly back to life. "Well worth a read."-Irish Echo 7/2011

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.