Jonathan Keates's passion for collecting historic guidebooks has resulted in a beguiling work of cultural archaeology, which explores the experience of travel for the British before the First World War. Unlike Lucy Honeychurch in E.M.Forster's A Room with a View, he revels in Baedeker, Murray and other Victorian examples, taking us on a poignant, funny and often revealing tour through this undiscovered genre.

A brilliantly witty and intelligent memoir of the adventures, discoveries, rescues, and narrow escapes of Martha Gellhorn, one of America's most important war correspondents and the third wife of Ernest Hemingway. "Gellhorn is incapable of writing a dull sentence". The Times (London) "Martha Gellhorn was so fearless in a male way, and yet utterly capable of making men melt", writes New Yorker literary editor Bill Buford. As a journalist, Gellhorn covered every military conflict from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam and Nicaragua. She also bewitched Eleanor Roosevelt's secret love and enraptured Ernest Hemingway with her courage as they dodged shell fire together. Hemingway is, of course, the unnamed "other" in the title of this tart memoir, first published in 1979, in which Gellhorn describes her globe-spanning adventures, both accompanied and alone. With razor-sharp humor and exceptional insight into place and character, she tells of a tense week spent among dissidents in Moscow; long days whiled away in a disused water tank with hippies clustered at Eilat on the Red Sea; and her journeys by sampan and horse to the interior of China during the Sino-Japanese War. Now including a foreward by Bill Buford and photographs of Gellhorn with Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Gary Cooper, and others, this new edition rediscovers the voice of an extraordinary woman and brings back into print an irresistibly entertaining classic.

A wonderfully original, warm and witty account of London over the past 3 decades that simultaneously charts the author's rise from incidental tourist to internationally renowned agony aunt. Irma Kurtz arrived in London from New Jersey in the late 1950s. Horrified by the postwar drabness, she fled to Paris, city of romance - and heartbreak . She returned to London in 1963, and her renewed encounter with the city developed into a slow-burn love affair. Irma's witty and percipient observations of contemporary London provide stepping stones into the past, and so both her own amazing life story and that of the metropolis unfurl before us in Dear London. Rebel and free spirit par excellence, her recollections create a vivid portrait of the Age of Aquarius; and her early career is a highly entertaining helter-skelter through the Central Office of Information, Raymond's Revue Bar and life at England's first girlie magazine, King before a post at the innovative Nova magazine set her on a course that she would pursue with huge success.

After more than thirty years as an expatriate, Irma Kurtz gave in to her growing curiosity about her American roots and set off on a grand adventure to explore 'the most baffling of all places' - by Greyhound bus. Taking only the barest necessitites for travel, she entered the vast network of America's bus routes and a seething, fleeting world of brief encounters and changing landscapes.

In an unforgettable tribute to the far latitudes, Gretel Ehrlich travels across Greenland, the largest island on earth. Greenland is the largest island on earth. All but five percent of it is covered by a vast ice sheet, an enduring remnant of the last ice age. Despite a uniquely hostile environment, it has been inhabited continuously for thousands of years. Greenlanders retain many of their traditional practices. Some still hunt on sleds made from whale and caribou with packs of dogs; others fashion harpoons from Narwhal tusks; entranced shamans make soul fights under the ice. The modern population lives on the edge of a stone- and ice-age world and has reached a unique understanding of it. Ehrlich mixes stories of European anthropologists who have recorded the ways of the Inuit, with artists who have lived briefly on Greenland's fringe in order to try to capture its extraordinary pure light. She travels across this unearthly landscape in the company of men and women who have a deep bond with it, and with them she discovers the realm of the Great Dark, ice pavilions, polar bears and Eskimo nomads. She learns about hunting and endurance, inuit languages, legends and ghosts. Conjuring up Greenland's cruel, beautiful landscape, she shows that it is a land endowed with magical and mysterious properties. St Brendan, the sixth century Irish monk, described one of its huge glaciers as 'a floating crystal castle the colour of a silver veil, yet hard as marble and the sea around it as smooth as glass and white as milk.' It has lost none of its power to enthral.

In the spring of 2004, David Lascelles invited a group of monks from Bhutan to build a stupa in the gardens of Harewood House in Yorkshire. It was a step into the unknown for the Bhutanese. They didn't speak any English, had never travelled outside their own culture, had never flown in an airplane or seen the ocean. Theirs was one kind of journey, but the project was also another kind of voyage for David. It was an attempt to reconcile a deep interest in Buddhism with the 250 years that his family has lived at Harewood, the country house and estate - with its links to one of the darkest chapters in Britain's colonial past - that he has loved, rejected, tried to make sense of and been haunted by all his life. In Buddhist thought, one of the functions of a stupa is to harmonise the environment in which it is built and subdue the chaotic forces at work there. Would this stupa have a similar effect, quelling the forces of Harewood's past and harmonising the contradictions of its present? A Hare-Marked Moon tells the story behind the extraordinary meeting of cultures that resulted in the Harewood Stupa, interspersed with accounts of David's travels in the Himalayas which delve into the rich and turbulent history of the region, and the beliefs that have shaped it.

After nearly a decade of dutifully climbing the corporate ladder to become a partner in a headhunting firm, Lucy Leonelli was feeling restless in a life that was seemingly mapped out for her, and she could not shake the sense that she was missing out on something... something out there. Realising that the answer was right in front of her - in a country so full of clandestine communities and colourful, eccentric characters - Lucy made the daring decision to hit the pause button on her career and hang up her suit in favour of a year exploring twenty-six wildly different subcultures. Over the next twelve months, she lived with battle re-enactors, circus performers, hill baggers, Morris dancers, naturists, trainspotters, yogis, zeitgeist political activists and more, experiencing first-hand their social rituals and customs in the hope that, somewhere along the way, she might just uncover the most authentic version of herself. A Year in the Life charts Lucy's adventure as she sang naked karaoke with naturists, jumped from one very high place to another with parkour daredevils, partied in tight latex with self-proclaimed vampires and fought the undead in an epic LARP battle. It tells of the importance of community in an increasingly isolating society; of the unquenchable human thirst for a sense of belonging; of how misguided our own prejudices can be; and of how when we open the door to others, we might just learn something about ourselves.

Bestselling author Giles Tremlett traverses the rich and varied history of Spain, from prehistoric times to today, in a brief, accessible primer for visitors, curious readers and hispanophiles. 'Tremlett is a fascinating socio-cultural guide, as happy to discuss Spain's World Cup win as its Moorish rule' Guardian 'Negotiates Spain's chaotic history with admirable clarity and style' The Times Spain's position on Europe's south-western corner has exposed it to cultural, political and actual winds blowing from all quadrants. Africa lies a mere nine miles to the south. The Mediterranean connects it to the civilizational currents of Phoenicians, Romans, Carthaginians, and Byzantines as well as the Arabic lands of the near east. Bronze Age migrants from the Russian steppe were amongst the first to arrive. They would be followed by Visigoths, Arabs, Napoleonic armies and many more invaders and immigrants. Circular winds and currents linked it to the American continent, allowing Spain to conquer and colonize much of it. As a result, Spain has developed a sort of hybrid vigour. Whenever it has tried to deny this inevitable heterogeneity, it has required superhuman effort to fashion a 'pure' national identity - which has proved impossible to maintain. In Espana, Giles Tremlett argues that, in fact, that lack of a homogenous identity is Spain's defining trait.

Further adventures on life in a small French town from Susan Loomis, cookery book writer and author of On Rue Tatin. On Rue Tatin was a delightful discovery, and every reader asked for more. The life on Rue Tatin seemed like a dream fulfilled. Now in Tarte Tatin, Susan Loomis shares with us how she, her husband and two children settled into life in a small French town, learnt about their neighbours and how to be accepted as inhabitants of the town. With her son going to a French school and her husband finding work in the town, Susan Loomis discovers the joys of the French lifestyle - the markets and the food in particular - but also some of the difficulties, particularly for those who are not born French. The creation of the long dreamt-of cookery school is a story of great appeal - everyone who has ever thought of starting their own small business will enjoy the ups and downs of their enterprise, and long to go to Rue Tatin.

The incredible memoir by international bestselling author of Where The Crawdads Sing, Delia Owens and her then partner Mark Owens', charting their time researching wildlife in the Kalahari Desert. Reissued and in full colour, for the first time since its original publication. In the early 1970s, carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, Mark and Delia Owens caught a plane to Africa, bought a third-hand Land Rover, and drove deep into the Kalahari Desert. There they lived for seven years, in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of square miles. In this vast wilderness the Owenses began their zoology research, working alongside lions, brown hyenas, jackals, giraffes, and the many other creatures they came to know. Cry of the Kalahari is a gripping account of how two young Americans survived the dangers of living in one of the last pristine areas on Earth. Reissued for the first time since its original publication in 1984, this beautiful new edition contains never-seen-before, colour photographs of Mark and Delia on their adventure of a lifetime. 'A remarkable story beautifully told . . . Among such classics as Goodall's In the Shadow of Man and Fossey's Gorillas in the Mist' Chicago Tribune 'For anyone interested in animals or in real life adventure, this book is a must' Jane Goodall 'Extraordinary . . . How the couple overcome the hazards of the desert and came to appreciate its living richness makes fascinating reading . . . Read their remarkable book to be delighted, moved, and awed' People Magazine

In recent decades, private jets have become status symbols for the world's wealthiest, while quick and easy flights have brought far-flung destinations within the reach of everyone. But at what cost to the environment? Around the world, flying emits around 860 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, and until the outbreak of Covid-19, the aviation industry was one of the planet's fastest-growing polluters. Now is the perfect time to pause and take stock of our toxic relationship with flying. Part climate-change investigation, part travel memoir, Zero Altitude follows Helen Coffey as she journeys as far as she can in the course of her job as a top travel journalist - all without getting on a single flight. Between trips by train, car, boat and bike, she meets climate experts and activists at the forefront of the burgeoning flight-free movement. Over the course of her travels, she discovers that keeping both feet on the ground is not only possible but that it can be an exhilarating opportunity for adventure. Her book is brimming with tips and ideas for swapping the middle seat for the open road.

W.A de Klerk was een van die voortreflikste literêre joernaliste in Afrikaans. In Drie Swerwers Oor Die Einders, vir die eerste maal in 1953 uitgegee, sit hy en twee vriende hul reis deur die uithoeke van Namibië (toe Suidwes-Afrika) voort.

Hy vertel op boeiende wyse van hulle wedervaringe tussen die Boesmans saam met die legendariese P.J. Schoeman, en van hulle omswerwinge in Damaraland en die Kaokoveld, deur Ovamboland en die streke om die Kunene. Hulle doel was om so ver moontlik die pad van die Dorslandtrek deur die noordwestelike hoek van Namibië te volg, en so kruis hul pad met talle kleurryke karakters.

Drie Swerwers Oor Die Einders is ’n ryk geskakeerde boek vol wetenswaardighede.

Dr Joan Louwrens was always drawn to wild places, which were balm to her soul. When her husband died, leaving her alone with two small daughters to raise, she threw herself wholeheartedly into ‘adventure medicine’, seeking out the world’s most remote corners – on land and at sea – to practise her healing, both her own and others.

Working in wild places from the Kruger Park to the Australian Outback, the Atlantic Ocean islands, and both the south and north poles, ‘Doctor Joan’ dealt with a vast range of medical issues, from rabies to deep-vein thrombosis, childbirth to wisdom-tooth extraction, catatonia to depression.

Showing an eagerness to learn and a humility that isn’t always a given in her profession, and with a wry eye and a sympathetic outlook, Joan Louwrens has written a memoir that’s a poignant and often funny story of a life lived to the full

When and how did we humans lose our connection with nature - and how do we find it again? Matthew Yeomans seeks to answer these questions as he walks more than 300 miles through the ancient and modern forests of Wales, losing himself in their stories (and on the odd unexpected diversion, too). Return to My Trees weaves together history and folklore with tales of industrial progress and decay. On his journey, he visits landmarks that once were home to ancient Druids, early Celtic saints, Norman Lords and the great mining communities that reshaped Wales. He becomes immersed in the woodlands that inspired the country's great legends. At one point he even stumbles upon a herd of television-watching cows. As Yeomans walks, he reflects on these woods' uncertain future, his own relationship with nature and the global problems we need to solve if humans are to truly make peace with the natural world. from tree-planting in ways that are actually beneficial to the environment and local communities to embedding the value of nature into our financial and economic systems. The result is a fascinating and funny adventure that offers insight into the past, present and future of Wales's woodlands and shows what the rest of the world can learn from them.

Paul Theroux, the author of the train travel classics The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, takes to the rails once again in this account of his epic journey through China. He hops aboard as part of a tour group in London and sets out for China's border. He then spends a year traversing the country, where he pieces together a fascinating snapshot of a unique moment in history. From the barren deserts of Xinjiang to the ice forests of Manchuria, from the dense metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing, and Canton to the dry hills of Tibet, Theroux offers an unforgettable portrait of a magnificent land and an extraordinary people.

Washed by the surging waves of the Atlantic Ocean, the island chain of Scotland's Outer Hebrides lies at the very edge of Europe. From white shell sands, peaty moors and gnarly mountains to heather hills, sea-green lochs and mysterious ancient monuments, these are places of unrivalled beauty. This book is a fabulous invitation to discover the unique magic of Lewis and Harris, Berneray, North Uist, Grimsay, Benbecula, South Uist, Eriskay, Bara and Vatersay, as well as the vibrant Gaelic culture of the islanders. Packed with fascinating insights, hidden gems and helpful information, it offers the uplifting opportunity for meaningful travels and life-affirming experiences in these extraordinary islands.

Martha was the youngest of sixteen, handpicked reporters who filed accurate, confidential reports on the human stories behind the statistics of the Depression directly to Roosevelt's White House. From these pages, we understand the real cost of sudden destitution on a vast scale. We taste the dust in the mouth, smell the disease and feel the hopelessness and the despair. And here, too, we can hear the earliest cadences of a writer who went on to become, arguably, the greatest female war reporter of the 20th century.

A Cult Classic, "The Way of the World" is one of the most beguiling travel books ever written. Reborn from the ashes of a Pakistan rubbish heap, it tells of a friendship between a writer and an artist, forged on an impecunious, life-enhancing journey from Serbia to Afghanistan in the 1950s. On one level it is a candid description of a road journey, on another a meditation on travel as a journey towards the self, all written by a sage with a golden pen and a wide infectious smile. It is published here for the first time in English with the Vernet drawings which are such a dynamic part of its whole.

A mouth-wateringly evocative memoir of a new life in Tuscany. Ferenc Mate and his painter wife Candace arrived from New York in the late 1980s, knowing almost no Italian and with only four weeks to find themselves a new home. After many (hilariously told) mishaps, they finally conclude the deal for their perfect house - an ancient farmhouse in the Tuscan hills - by drawing on the hood of a rusty tractor. Mate brings the real Tuscany to life: the neighbours, the countryside, country-life, the family farm down the road who virtually adopt them and teach them the Tuscan traditions of grape-picking, wine-making, mushroom hunting, woodcutting, the holidays and, of course, the almost never-ending, mouth-watering feasts. The Hills of Tuscany is a classic piece of rural escapism for urban dreamers. Witty and enticingly written, it offers a tempting invitation to readers to lose themselves in its lushness. Steeped in the mesmerizing Italian landscape, full of unforgettable characters, this book is an affirmation of traditions, friendship and the countryside - a celebration of life itself.

Set in the urban pastoral of an East London postcode, Feral Borough asks what it means to call a place home, and how best to share that home with its non-human inhabitants. Meryl Pugh reimagines the wild as 'feral', recording the fauna and flora of Leytonstone in prose as incisive as it is lyrical. Here, on the edge of the city, red kite and parakeets thrive alongside bluebell and yarrow, a muntjac deer is glimpsed in the undergrowth, and an escaped boa constrictor appears on the High Road. In this subtle, captivating book - part herbarium, part bestiary and part memoir - Pugh explores the effects of loss, and lockdown, on human well-being, conjuring the local urban environment as a site for healing and connection. 'A subtle, heartfelt and affecting book about home, the city and the self -- Pugh reminds us that nowhere, however urban, is without nature; that wherever we go, the intricate web of life continues to shape and change us.' Rebecca Tamas

At a time when Americans were so riveted by questions about their place in a newly hostile world and were swearing off air travel, Elinor Burkett did not just take a trip -- she took a headlong dive into enemy territories.

Her yearlong odyssey began with her assignment as a Fulbright Professor teaching journalism in Kyrgyzstan, a faded fragment of Soviet might in the heart of Central Asia -- a place of dilapidated apartments, bizarre food, and demoralized citizens clinging to the safety of Brother Russia. She then journeyed to Afghanistan and Iraq -- where she mingled with tense Iraqis, watching the gathering storm clouds of an American-led invasion -- as well as Iran, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, China, and Vietnam.

Whether she's writing about being served goat's head in a Kyrgyz yurt, checking out bowling alleys in Baghdad, or trying to cook a chicken in a crumbling apartment, Burkett offers an eclectic series of adventures that are alternately comical, poignant, and discomfiting.

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2023** 'Full of delightful anecdotes and interviews and fascinating historical tales' Mail on Sunday A panoramic portrait of the wonderous vehicle whose passenger is also its engine. A toy, a tool, a liberator, or complete nuisance: the bicycle has been many things to many people over the decades, yet it endures as the most popular form of transport in the world. How has such a simple machine achieved so much? Combining history, travelogue and memoir, Jody Rosen reshapes our understanding of this ubiquitous vehicle from its invention in 1817 to its present-day renaissance as a 'green machine'. Readers meet unforgettable characters: women's suffragists who steered bikes to the barricades in the 1890s, a Bhutanese king who races mountain bikes in the Himalayas, astronauts who ride a floating bicycle in zero gravity. By examining the bicycle's past and peering into its future, Two Wheels Good forms a joyful ode to an engineering marvel of global importance. 'Funny, precise, surprising' Adam Gopnik 'Love for two-wheeled transport runs through every sentence' Economist 'Wry, rich, deeply researched' Patrick Radden Keefe

In a post-exploration world, two relatively ordinary blokes, serving Royal Marines, decided they wanted an extraordinary 21st century adventure. In this refreshingly honest account they re-live the highs and lows of sailing and rowing a tiny open boat, completely unsupported, through one of the most iconic wilderness waterways on the planet - the Northwest Passage across the top of Canada. They describe battling with an Arctic storm miles from land and being caught in the worst sea ice for more than a decade. At one point they are forced to drag Arctic Mariner, their seventeen-foot boat, across ten miles of broken pack ice to reach open water. Their story is enriched by the Inuit people and the incredible wildlife they met along the way, including all-too-close encounters with both grizzly and polar bears. And they relate with honesty how the isolation and stresses of the high Arctic shaped the bond between their two very different personalities. This is neither an expose of global warming, nor a detailed study of Inuit culture. It is not particularly long on the historical quest for the Northwest Passage. It is quite simply the tale of two blokes, up north. b/w photographs, maps, drawings

"If you're looking for ideas, or planning a bucket-list adventure, you'll find page after page of sepia-tinted inspiration in the revised edition of teNeues' Nostalgic Journeys." - Irish Independent The seaside or the mountains? Today's most important vacation planning question never came up in days long past. Both seemed unappealing and nearly inaccessible. It wasn't until the invention of the railroad that previously sparsely visited and overlooked areas opened up, and Thomas Cook, the tour operator and founder of modern tourism, was born. Fishing villages became sophisticated seaside resorts, remote mountain areas became destinations for hiking and skiing enthusiasts, and inns became grand hotels. Nostalgic Journeys takes you on a journey back in time, through the last two centuries: Ride the Orient Express to the East, cross the Atlantic on huge ocean liners, travel Route 66 through the United States, and break the sound barrier aboard the Concorde. As you browse through the pages of this book, you will get the idea that travelling was, and can be, more than just being stuck in a traffic jam or passing through numerous security checks. It can be a stylish and sometimes adventurous way to explore the world and return home feeling transformed by your many and varied experiences. Bon Voyage! Text in English and German.

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