This is Patrick Leigh Fermor's spellbinding part-travelogue, part inspired evocation of a part of Greece's past. Joining him in the Mani, one of Europe's wildest and most isolated regions, cut off from the rest of Greece by the towering Taygettus mountain range and hemmed in by the Aegean and Ionian seas, we discover a rocky central prong of the Peleponnese at the southernmost point in Europe. Bad communications only heightening the remoteness, this Greece - south of ancient Sparta - is one that maintains perhaps a stronger relationship with the ancient past than with the present. Myth becomes history, and vice versa. Leigh Fermor's hallmark descriptive writing and capture of unexpected detail have made this book, first published in 1958, a classic - together with its Northern Greece counterpart, Roumeli.

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR DOES 'I LOVE YOU' EVEN MEAN THE SAME THING AS 'JE T'AIME'? When Lauren Collins met a Frenchman at a party one night in London, she had no idea that she would one day wake up to find herself married to him, living in Geneva. Feeling almost voiceless in French-speaking Switzerland, Lauren was no longer able to order a salad, let alone talk to her husband's parents. But a language barrier was no match for love... A smart, funny and thoughtful look at how language shapes our lives, When in French shows what happens when two languages, and two very different cultures, collide.

In 1897, two sisters embark from Pennsylvania in search of soul-broadening experiences in the Indian Southwest, newly opened to intrepid travellers. Their letters and photographs are the heart of this brilliantly reassembled grand tour.

_______________ THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER: the remarkable true story of the exploration ship featured in The Terror In the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, HMS Erebus undertook two of the most ambitious naval expeditions of all time. On the first, she ventured further south than any human had ever been. On the second, she vanished with her 129-strong crew in the wastes of the Canadian Arctic, along with the HMS Terror. Her fate remained a mystery for over 160 years. Then, in 2014, she was found. This is her story. _______________ Now available: Michael Palin's North Korea Journals _______________ A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Beyond terrific . . . I didn't want it to end.' Bill Bryson 'Illuminated by flashes of gentle wit . . . It's a fascinating story that [Palin] brings full-bloodedly to life.' Guardian 'This is an incredible book . . . The Erebus story is the Arctic epic we've all been waiting for.' Nicholas Crane 'Thoroughly absorbs the reader. . . Carefully researched and well-crafted, it brings the story of a ship vividly to life.' Sunday Times 'A great story . . . Told in a very relaxed and sometimes - as you might expect - very funny Palin style.' David Baddiel, Daily Mail 'Magisterial . . . Brings energy, wit and humanity to a story that has never ceased to tantalise people since the 1840s.' The Times

A chic and humorous visual homage to two of the world's most iconic cities.

When Vahram Muratyan began his online travel journal, "Paris versus New York," he had no idea how quickly it would become one of the most buzzed-about sites on the Internet-it garnered more than a million and a half page views in just a few months, and the attention of savvy online critics. Now Muratyan presents his unique observations in this delightful book, featuring visually striking graphics paired with witty, thought-provoking taglines that celebrate the special details of each city. "Paris versus New York" is a heartfelt gift to denizens of both cities and to those who dream of big-city romance.

Shortlisted for the SAUK Fage & Oliver Prize 2020 'Honorable Mention' for the ALA First Book Award - Scholarship 2021 A path-breaking contribution to the critical literature on African travel writing. Throughout the twentieth century, Nigerians have been writing about their travels within Nigeria using a variety of media and forms, from serialised newspaper travelogues to personal diaries, autobiographies and online narratives.These works offer important insights into how Nigerians have represented Nigeria to itself and to the world. This is the first book to examine the production of Nigerian travel narratives about Nigeria in the century from colonisation to independence. Rebecca Jones argues that we can read these texts both as the products of a local Nigerian print culture, and through their articulations with global travel writing traditions. Focusing on travel writing published from 1914 to 2014 in the Yoruba-speaking region of southwestern Nigeria, home to a well-established and prolific writing and print culture in both Yoruba and English, this cultural history of Nigerian travel comprisesclose readings of these works, and argues that the production of travel writing in the region can be read not simply as a foreign import, but as a cluster of genres with a cohesive local history. Writers discussed include Samuel Ajayi Crowther, I.B. Thomas, E.A. Akintan, Isaac Delano, D.O. Fagunwa, Amos Tutuola, Ben Okri, Babatunde Shadeko, Damilola Ajenifuja, Chibuzor Mirian Azubuike, Pelu Awofeso, Lape Soetan, Teju Cole, Adewale Maja-Pearce, Noo Saro-Wiwa, and the Invisible Borders collective. Nigeria: Premium Times Books

This 'dream-laden and spooked' (Marina Warner, London Review of Books) story is to many one of the best-loved books of the twentieth century. Munthe spent many years working as a doctor in Southern Italy, labouring unstintingly during typhus, cholera and earthquake disasters. It was during this period that he came across the ruined Tiberian villa of San Michele, perched high above the glittering Bay of Naples on Capri. With the help of Mastro Nicola and his three sons, and with only a charcoal sketch roughly drawn on a garden wall to guide them, Munthe devoted himself to rebuilding the house and chapel. Over five long summers they toiled under a sapphire-blue sky, their mad-cap project leading them to buried skeletons and ancient coins, and to hilarious encounters with a rich cast of vividly-drawn villagers. The Story of San Michele reverberates with the mesmerising hum of a long, hot Italian summer. Peopled with unforgettable characters, it is as brilliantly enjoyable and readable today as it was upon first publication. The book quickly became an international bestseller and has now been translated into more than 30 languages; it is today an established classic, and sales number i

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

This is a classic real-life story of derring do on the high seas, complete with extreme risk, last-minute ingenuity and many near-misses.

Beginning in the 1960s, this book tells of the real life adventures of the author as a boy - a time of boarding schools, long holidays and an unbelievable (to today's parents) amount of freedom and danger. Encouraged by his parents (who lived abroad) to become more independent and self-sufficient, Peter decided to see how far he could get in his family's small open dinghy Calypso. Aged 16, he spent a winter restoring her, before pootling straight out into a force 7 gale and very nearly capsizing, after which he headed back to land to plan even more extreme adventures.

Calypso was a Wayfarer, a small (16ft) and very popular class of open dinghy; a boat designed for pottering around coastlines and estuaries during the day. But along with the occasional brave crewmate, Peter managed to sail her across the Channel, through the Bay of Biscay, down the French canals and into the Mediterranean, then up into the North Sea and the Baltic to Oslo, living aboard for three months at a time. These were some of the longest voyages that anyone had ever achieved in an open boat, where (as Peter says) you 'have to be like a tightrope walker, concentrating on balance day and night, fully aware of the consequence of relaxing your vigilance'. He survived huge waves, nine rudder breakages in heavy seas, dismasting, capsizes, and hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation. He also managed it on a tiny budget, working as a farm labourer, hitchhiking everywhere, and at times living on one meal of cereal a day, to save the maximum amount for his boat.

Charming, quite British in style, beautifully written and a lovely insight into a seemingly golden time, this is primarily a great read, but will be of huge practical use to anyone wanting to go that bit further in their dinghy. It also includes a lovely Foreword by world-famous yachtsman Brian Thompson.

This book, first published in 1903, is an account of Lafcadio Hearn's insights and experiences of Japan. Hearn, known also by the Japanese name Koizumi Yakumo, was an international writer who was best known for his books about Japan and Japanese culture. This book will be of interest to students of history and Asian Studies.

Hoping to rediscover his deeper purpose, Rijumati, an English Buddhist teacher and businessman, embarked on a journey into the unknown: a round-the-world trip by land and sea that became a kind of pilgrimage. Months - and many crises - later he returned with new reverence for ordinary people and places, a sense of veneration for nature's wonders and a profound gratitude for being human. Part travel diary and part record of a spiritual journey, these pages evoke the sacred, remote places encountered in the outer world alongside the 'inner terrain' that unfolded along the way. If you have ever felt the call of the open road, longed to travel as a form of self-discovery, or just wanted to know how to stay sane whilst getting a visa stamp in Kazakhstan, then Pilgrimage to Anywhere is for you.

A true story of modern day exploration and the discovery of cannibal tribes in the 21st century.

At twenty-five, Emily Chappell took up cycle couriering while she searched for a 'real job'. Eight years on, she is still riding. As she flies through the streets of London, dancing with the traffic, Chappell records the pains and pleasures of life on wheels: the dangerous missions; the moments of fear and freedom, and ultimately the simple joy of pedalling onward.

When Philip Marsden moved to a remote, creekside farmhouse in Cornwall, the intensity of his response took him aback. It led him to wonder why we react so strongly to certain places and set him off on a journey on foot westwards to Land's End through one of the most myth-rich regions of Europe. From the Neolithic ritual landscape of Bodmin Moor to the Arthurian traditions at Tintagel, from the mysterious china-clay region to the granite tors and tombs of the far south-west, Marsden assembles a chronology of Britain's attitude to place. In archives, he uncovers the life and work of other enthusiasts before him - medieval chroniclers and Tudor topographers, eighteenth-century antiquarians, post-industrial poets and abstract painters. Drawing also on his travels from further afield, Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our own history but of man's perennial struggle to belong on this earth.

Richly observed, this witty and yet deeply moving tale of Charlotte Hobson's year travelling around Russia takes us to the heart of a country that we are continually interested in, yet can struggle to understand. As the TLS put it, Hobson writes with 'such a beguiling directness that it is hard not to feel intimate with her and her characters. Few books evoke so much of Russian life, with so little effort.''Each chapter is a bonne bouche, possessing its own particular flavour, from sweet to acrid-bitter. Hobson's characters are often wonderfully quixotic and so is the spirit she finds everywhere at this crux in Russia's history. She drinks with derelicts, hangs out with gypsies, and watches investigators go about the grim business of exhuming purge victims, and giving them the Christian burial they have been denied for seventy years. Her style is deft: she manages to render the scenes through which she passes with needle-sharp precision.' Financial Times

John Kretschmer is sailing's practical philosopher - as much a doer as a thinker. And that is the overarching theme of this chronicle of a sailing life. Often amusing, sometimes poignant, occasionally terrifying but always inspiring, his deeply personal account is a welcome reminder of the good life waiting at sea. With hundreds of thousands of nautical miles under his keel, John's adventures have taken him several times around the world, with challenging crossings of the Atlantic and the Pacific, a narrow escape from a coup in Yemen, an unlikely deliverance from a coral reef off Belize as well as more serene, introspective passages where trade winds are blowing and stories are flowing. His crew has included CEOs, actors, writers, teachers, kids - in essence, everyone. John's narrative is interwoven with practical tips and advice in seamanship, but also, and just as importantly, his hard-won insights about making the most of our lives. He truly believes we find out who we really are, and what we are capable of, far from the shackles of land, when we find a place where time changes shape - days may merge into one another, but minutes are memorable. To live adventurously is to live more fully, and that is the life John Kretschmer continues to live. In this book he shares his simple profundities that will inspire those who live to sail, and those seeking something more rewarding from life.

In mid-1964, Keith Widdowson got wind that the Western Region was hell-bent on being the first to eliminate the steam locomotive on its tracks by December 1965. The 17-year-old hurriedly homed in on train services still in the hands of GWR steam power, aiming to catch runs with the last examples before their premature annihilation. The Great Western Steam Retreat recalls Widdowson's teenage exploits, soundtracked by hits from the Beatles, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones, throughout the Western Region and former Great Western Railway lines. He documents the extreme disorder that resulted from that decision, paying tribute to the train crews who managed to meet demanding timings in the face of declining cleanliness, the poor quality of coal and the major problem of recruiting both footplate and shed staff. This book completes the author's Steam Chase series and provides a snapshot into the comradery that characterised the final years of steam alongside the long-gone journeys that can never be recreated.

Nicolas Bouvier was an image merchant and photographer as well as a writer. The Eland edition of "Japanese Chronicles" will be accompanied by many of his startling images of Japan. "The Japanese Chronicles" is a distillation of Bouvier's lifelong quest for Japan and his many travels, so that the reader is able to discover the country through the eyes of both a passionate young man, the sensual appeciation of a middle-aged artist and the serenity of an experience writer. 'Like other great literature, [Bouvier's] Chronicles pulls the reader into a timeless dimension where all is transformed and there is no separation between the reader and the work' - "San Francisco Review of Books". 'Some of the most resonant and perceptive travel writing in recent years'. - "Kirkus Reviews". 'Bouvier's distinguished accomplishments have culminated here in a book that succeeds in transforming personal experiences into a series of epiphanies for the reader'. - "Booklist".

Everyone knows that America is 50 states and... some other stuff. The U.S. territories-American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands-and their 4 million people are little known and often forgotten, so Doug Mack set out on a 30,000-mile journey to learn about them. How did they come to be part of the United States? What are they like today? And why aren't they states? Deeply researched and richly reported, The Not-Quite States of America is an entertaining and unprecedented account of the territories' crucial yet overlooked place in the American story.

Winner: Mountain Literature (Non Fiction) The Jon Whyte Award, Banff Mountain Book Competition 2019 Waymaking is an anthology of prose, poetry and artwork by women who are inspired by wild places, adventure and landscape. Published in 1961, Gwen Moffat's Space Below My Feet tells the story of a woman who shirked the conventions of society and chose to live a life in the mountains. Some years later in 1977, Nan Shepherd published The Living Mountain, her prose bringing each contour of the Cairngorm mountains to life. These pioneering women set a precedent for a way of writing about wilderness that isn't about conquering landscapes, reaching higher, harder or faster, but instead about living and breathing alongside them, becoming part of a larger adventure. The artists in this inspired collection continue Gwen and Nan's legacies, redressing the balance of gender in outdoor adventure literature. Their creativity urges us to stop and engage our senses: the smell of rain-soaked heather, wind resonating through a col, the touch of cool rock against skin, and most importantly a taste of restoring mind, body and spirit to a former equanimity. With contributions from adventurers including Alpinist magazine editor Katie Ives, multi-award-winning author Bernadette McDonald, adventurers Sarah Outen and Anna McNuff, renowned filmmaker Jen Randall and many more, Waymaking is an inspiring and pivotal work published in an era when wilderness conservation and gender equality are at the fore.

For over twenty years, people turned to A. A. Gill's columns every Sunday - for his fearlessness, his perception, and the laughter-and-tear-provoking one-liners - but mostly because he was the best. 'By miles the most brilliant journalist of our age', as Lynn Barber put it. This is the definitive collection of a voice that was silenced too early but that can still make us look at the world in new and surprising ways. In the words of Andrew Marr, A.. A. Gill was 'a golden writer'. There was nothing that he couldn't illuminate with his dazzling prose. Wherever he was - at home or abroad - he found the human story, brought it to vivid life, and rendered it with fierce honesty and bracing compassion. And he was just as truthful about himself. There have been various collections of A. A. Gill's journalism - individual compilations of his restaurant and TV criticism, of his travel writing and his extraordinary feature articles. This book showcasesthe very best of his work: the peerlessly funny criticism, the extraordinarily knowledgeable food writing, assignments throughout the world, and reflections on life, love, and death. Drawn from a range of publications, including the Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, Tatler and Australian Gourmet Traveller, The Ivy Cookbook and his books on England and America, it is by turns hilarious, uplifting, controversial, unflinching, sad, funny and furious.

A journey along one of Britain's oldest roads, from Dover to Anglesey, in search of the hidden history that makes us who we are today. 'A bravura piece of writing - Bill Bryson on acid' Tom Holland Winding its way from the White Cliffs of Dover to the Druid groves of Anglesey, the ancient road of Watling Street has gone by many different names. It is a road of witches and ghosts, of queens and highwaymen, of history and myth, of Bletchley Park codebreakers, Chaucer, Boudicca, Dickens and James Bond. But Watling Street is not just the story of a route across our island. It is an acutely observed exploration of Britain and who we are today, told with wit and an unerring eye for the curious and surprising.

In 1528, the Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca and his three companions were shipwrecked and, looking for help, began an eight-year trek through the deserts of the American West. Over three centuries later, the four "Great Surveys" in the United States were consolidated into the U.S. Geological Survey. The frontiers were the lands near or beyond the recognized international, national, regional, or tribal borders. Over the centuries, they hosted a complicated series of international explorations of lands inhabited by American Indians, Spanish, French-Canadians, British, and Americans. These explorations were undertaken for wide-ranging reasons including geographical, scientific, artistic-literary, and for the growth of the railroad. This history covers over 350 years of exploration of the West.

This is not a book about French Gardens. It is the story of a man travelling round France visiting a few selected French gardens on the way. Owners, intrigues, affairs, marriages, feuds, thwarted ambitions and desires, the largely unnamed ordinary gardeners, wars, plots and natural disasters run through every garden older than a generation or two and fill every corner of the grander historical ones. Families marry. Gardeners are poached. Political allegiances forged and shattered. The human trail crosses from garden to garden. They sit in their surrounding landscape, not as isolated islands but attached umbilically to it, sharing the geology, the weather, food, climate, local folklore, accent and cultural identity. Wines must be drunk and food tasted. Recipes found and compared. The perfect tarte-tartin pursued. None of these things can be ignored or separated from the shape and size of parterre, fountain, herbaceous border or pottager. So this is a book filled with stories and information, some of it about French gardens and gardening, but most of it about what makes France unlike anywhere else. From historical gardens like Versailles,Vaux le Vicomte and Courances to the kitchen gardens of the Michelin chef Alain Passard. There are grand potagers like Villandry and La Prieure D'Orsan and allotments and back gardens spotted on the way. Monty celebrates the obvious French associations of food and wine and finds gardens dedicated to vegetables, herbs and fruit. It is a book that any visitor to France, whether gardeners or not, will want to read both as a guide and an inspiration. It is a portal to get under the French cultural skin and to understand the country, in all its huge variety and disparity, a little better.

Undertaken for the purpose of promoting legitimate trade in Central Africa, the Richardson mission was a compound of philanthropic and diplomatic interests advocated by Richardson. His main targets were the Sahara, Bornu and the Sudan.