A Guardian Best Nature Book of the Year

The magic and mystery of the woods are embedded in culture, from ancient folklore to modern literature. They offer us refuge: a place to play, a place to think. They are the generous providers of timber and energy. They let us dream of other ways of living. Yet we now face a future where taking a walk in the woods is consigned to the tales we tell our children.

Immersing himself in the beauty of woodland Britain, Peter Fiennes explores our long relationship with the woods and the sad and violent story of how so many have been lost. Just as we need them, our woods need us too. But who, if anyone, is looking out for them?

The towns of Valencia's long coast and privileged climate, in particular Benidorm, southern Europe's skyscraper capital, are famous beach tourism destinations. Country of fire, fireworks and long meals (often featuring the renowned paella), Valencia is a Mediterranean land where people know how to enjoy life. This book tells the story of today's Spanish provinces of Valencia, Castello and Alacant (Alicante), with their profound Moorish legacy. The Moors designed the intricate system of irrigation that still nourishes Valencia's prosperous horta (market garden). They brought, too, the silk, paper and orange industries. The area is rich in monuments, many from its golden fifteenth century, when the capital became the wealthiest city on the Western Mediterranean. Sails & Winds discusses Sagunt's Roman theatre and castle; Gandia, home to the ill-reputed Borja (or Borgia) family of popes; Elx, embraced by 200,000 palms; and Alcoi, anarchist stronghold. Michael Eaude discusses Valencia's art, literature and architecture: the painters Ribera and light-filled Sorolla; the great medieval poet of anguish Ausias March. Santiago Calatrava's architecture, conjuring the sensation of soaring flight from steel, has given Valencia city its new trophy buildings. Despite the continuing holiday boom, there are still deserted beaches, sinister and beautiful marshland, orange groves and a depopulated mountainous interior. Sails & Winds seeks to explain this contradictory and divided land, its identity pulled between the Spanish state and Catalonia.

In 1926 Barry Dierks, a young American architect, arrived in Paris and fell in love with France... With his partner, an ex-officer in the British Army, he built a white, flat-roofed Modernist masterpiece that rested on the rocks below the Esterel, with views across the Mediterranean. They called it Le Trident. From the moment it was built, it captivated the Riviera. As commissions for more villas flooded in, Barry Dierks and Eric Sawyer, 'those two charmers', flourished at the heart of Riviera society. Over the years, Dierks would design and build over 70 of the Riviera's most recognisable villas for clients ranging from Somerset Maugham's Villa Mauresque and Jack Warner's Villa Aujourd'hui to the Marquess of Cholmondeley's Villa Le Roc, and Maxine Elliott's Chateau de l'Horizon, later the home of Aly Khan and Rita Hayworth. Riviera Dreaming tells the dazzling story of the lives, loves and adventures that played out behind the walls of these glamorous houses and provides an unparalleled portrait of life on the Cote d'Azur at the height of the Jazz Age.

First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The stunning book from Christopher Ross, Sunday Times top 10 bestselling author of 'Tunnel Visions'. In 1970 Japan's most famous writer, Yukio Mishima, cut open his stomach and was then beheaded with his own antique sword. His anachronistic suicide has been called many things: a desperate heroic gesture; a work of art; a political protest; the antics of a madman. But which is correct? And what became of Mishima's sword? Thirty years later Christopher Ross sets out for Japan on the trail of those who might have answers: craftsmen and critics; soldiers and swordsmen; boyfriends and biographers; even the man who taught Mishima hara-kiri. Like his best-selling 'Tunnel Visions: Journeys of an Underground Philosopher', Christopher Ross has written another unclassifiable blend of travel writing, autobiography and philosophical enquiry to create a mesmeric account of modern Japan and the peculiar death that haunts it to this day.

"Turley presents a thoroughly-researched literay and cultural history of the transgressive pirate figure in the early eighteenth-century."
--"Journal of Folklore Research"

Despite, or perhaps because of, our lack of actual knowledge about pirates, an immense architecture of cultural mythology has arisen around them. Three hundred years of novels, plays, painting, and movies have etched into the popular imagination contradictory images of the pirate as both arch-criminal and anti-hero par excellence. How did the pirate-a real threat to mercantilism and trade in early-modern Britain-become the hypermasculine anti-hero familiar to us through a variety of pop culture outlets? How did the pirate's world, marked as it was by sexual and economic transgression, come to capture our collective imagination?

In Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, Hans Turley delves deep into the archives to examine the homoerotic and other culturally transgressive aspects of the pirate's world and our prurient fascination with it. Turley fastens his eye on historical documents, trial records, and the confessions of pirates, as well as literary works such as Robinson Crusoe, to track the birth and development of the pirate image and to show its implications for changing notions of self, masculinity, and sexuality in the modern era.

Turley's wide-ranging analysis provides a new kind of history of both piracy and desire, articulating the meaning of the pirate's contradictory image to literary, cultural, and historical studies.

How to Observe Morals and Manners is the first systematic and substantive treatise on the methodology of sociological research. First published in 1838 and long out of print, this new edition presents for modern students research techniques used by those whose work has been the foundation for present day social science. The book is based upon two years of intensive field research in the United States, and is a pioneering benchmark for all subsequent methodology texts in sociology.

Martineau charts a comprehensive guide to sociological observation, exploring problems of bias, hasty generalization, samples, reactivity, interviews, participant observation, corroboration, and data recording techniques. Couching her observations as advice to travellers visiting foreign lands, she warns against preconceptions and urges strict reporting of observed patterns of cross-sections of social life. She also illustrates how to use interview data to corroborate observational data. Pragmatic tips and specific questions are suggested for exploring the major institutions of society, including religion, education, marriage, popular culture, markets, prisons, police, media, government, fine arts, and charities.

Intended as a treatise on methodology, the book is also an insightful work of theory. Before Marx, and well before Durkheim and Weber, Martineau examined social class, forms of religion, types of suicide, national character, domestic relations and the status of women, delinquency and criminology, and the intricate interrelationships between social institutions and the individual. The book will be of interest to sociologists, geographers, anthropologists, historians, and researchers in women's studies. The introduction by Michael R. Hill locates the book within Martineau's overall epistemology of social analysis, revealing her to be a reflexive, critical, and scientific pioneer of sociological thought.

Beautifully produced, with a Foreword by Dame Ellen MacArthur, specially commissioned maps and atmospheric line drawings, this is a classic edition of one of the greatest sea adventures of all time. Joshua Slocum's epic solo voyage around the world in 1895 aboard the 37 foot sloop Spray remains one of the major feats of singlehanded voyaging, and has since been the inspiration for the many who have gone to sea in small boats. Starting from Boston in 1895, by the time he dropped anchor in Newport, Rhode Island over three years after his journey began, he had cruised some 46,000 miles entirely by sail and entirely alone. With none of the advantages of modern technology, Slocum faced fog, gales, gear failure, coral reefs and attacks by pirates. He also devised his own system of lashing the wheel into an early version of the modern day autopilot, which enabled him to sail 2,000 miles across the Pacific without once touching the helm. Slocum published his account of the voyage in 1900, and the book was an immediate success. Sailing Alone Around the World is a classic of sailing literature, acclaimed as an unequalled masterpiece of vital yet disciplined prose. It will be welcomed by all admirers of his legendary achievement.

This extraordinary series of observations on England and Ireland complements de Tocqueville's masterpieces on the United States and France in the mid-nineteenth century. These pages are perhaps the most penetrating writings on the spirit of British politics. In effect, as indicated by John Stuart Mill, de Tocqueville was the Montesquieu of the nineteenth century. This is especially the case if one thinks of the present Irish situation. His political acumen reached into the future -which is now our present.

LONGLISTED FOR RSL ONDAATJE PRIZE 2021 'Terrific... Britain's urban landscape is just as freighted with myth and mystery as its castles and ancient monuments and [Rees] proves it by unearthing a treasure trove of riveting stories.' - Sunday Times, Best Books of the Year, 2020 ----- There is a Britain that exists outside of the official histories and guidebooks - places that lie on the margins, left behind. A Britain in the cracks of the urban facade where unexpected life can flourish. Welcome to UNOFFICIAL BRITAIN. This is a land of industrial estates, factories and electricity pylons, of motorways and ring roads, of hospitals and housing estates, of roundabouts and flyovers. Places where modern life speeds past but where people and stories nevertheless collect. Places where human dramas play out: stories of love, violence, fear, boredom and artistic expression. Places of ghost sightings, first kisses, experiments with drugs, refuges for the homeless, hangouts for the outcasts. Struck by the power of these stories and experiences, Gareth E. Rees set out to explore these spaces and the essential part they have played in the history and geography of our isles. Though mundane and neglected, they can be as powerfully influential in our lives, and imaginations, as any picture postcard tourist destination. 'Unexpected and fascinating' - Melissa Harrison, author of The Stubborn Light of Things 'The mythical and the municipal collide in a weirdly compelling tour of Britain's built environment.' - Financial Times

In "The Hill of Kronos", Peter Levi paints a radiant portrait of the Greece he came to know through a lifetime of exploration. As a young scholar he sought out its ancient spirit, the keys to its mythology and civilisation, in its ruined cities and majestic mountains. Later, as a priest working as a diplomat and a friend of the oppressed, he lived in Athens through the dark days of the dictatorship. Then the sinews of political life led back to secret alliances made during the civil war and the earlier occupation of Greece, back to murder, starvation and corpse-filled quarries. Lastly, it is seen through the mature eyes of a family man, with the ripened sensibility of an acclaimed poet. This is a precious fusion of experience, a gift of insight from one philhellene to all those who have come to love Greece.

In a ruined temple along the Nile, Anthony Sattin sees a woman praying to the gods of ancient Egypt to bless her with a child. Later that day, a policeman stops his taxi to ask to borrow a mobile phone to call his mother. The ancient rubs up against the modern just as dramatically as when Flaubert wrote, 'Egypt is a wonderful place for contrasts - splendid things gleam in the dust". Anthony Sattin has tracked down extraordinary examples of ancient survivals in the hurly-burly of modern Egypt.

"What a wilderness walk for a man to take alone!...Here was traveling of the old heroic kind over the unaltered face of nature." Henry David Thoreau

Over a period of three years, Thoreau made three trips to the largely unexplored woods of Maine. He climbed mountains, paddled a canoe by moonlight, and dined on cedar beer, hemlock tea and moose lips. Taking notes constantly, Thoreau was just as likely to turn his observant eye to the habits and languages of the Abnaki Indians or the arduous life of the logger as he was to the workings of nature. He acutely observed the rivers, lakes, mountains, wolves, moose, and stars in the dark sky. He also told of nights sitting by the campfire, and of meeting men who communicated with each other by writing on the trunks of trees. In The Maine Woods, Thoreau captured a wilder side of America and revealed his own adventurous spirit.

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

The history of the African Association, the world's first geographical society, dedicated to the exploration of the interior of a continent known only through legend and vague report. Africa was once seen as an El Dorado - a gold-encrusted continent of hope and prosperity, where the ancient civilisations of the Phoenicians and the Egyptians might have survived intact. The African Association, the world's first geographical society, set itself the task of revealing the mysteries of the interior of Africa. Founded in 1788 by a group of London-based gentlemen, made famous by the amazing exploits of its adventurers, for forty-three years it was engaged in a quest for geographical knowledge, personal glory, immense wealth and the fulfilment of national ambitions. There are two strands to the narrative. First there are the people who planned and paid for expeditions, the geographers, scholars, politicians, humanitarian activists and sharp-eyed traders, the richest commoner in England and two former prime ministers among them. Theirs is a lively tale of tavern meetings, court lobbying and salon intrigue during one of the most dramatic periods of world history. Then there are the adventurers, a mixed group of ex-cons and social outcasts - British, French, Germans and Americans among them - who went to the magical continent in search of glory and the unknown. They included Mungo Park, whose account of his travels was a bestseller for more than a century, and Jean Louis Burckhardt, discoverer of Petra and Abu Simbel. Each of their journeys was extraordinary, packed with drama and excitement, made notable by geographical discoveries and, with very few exceptions, ending in death. An outstanding account of a unique period characterised by the passion, ambition, courage and sheer sense of adventure of its participants.

Millions of people across the world have heard of Jesus Christ, but how many are truly familiar with the key locations he frequented? Following the chronology of Jesus' life and ministry, and drawing especially on the Gospel of Luke, Peter Walker takes us from Bethlehem to Nazareth to the desert as we follow Jesus on his final journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. In each chapter particular attention is given to what Jesus did in that location, and to the authenticity of archaeological and recorded evidence of later pilgrims and historians. Building on the success of the first edition, this updated and expanded edition takes into account the most recent archaeological discoveries. Richly illustrated, and using maps, timelines, and feature boxes to highlight important themes, this is a rich and absorbing guide that provides a unique insight into Jesus' world - an ideal companion for travellers to the Holy land or for scholars and pastors around the world.

An evocative and lyrical history of Cyprus and the Mediterranean. Think of a place where can you stand at the intersection of Christian and Arab cultures, at the crossroads of the British, Ottoman, Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian empires; a place marked by the struggle between fascism and communism and where the capital city is divided in half as a result of bloody internal conflict; where the ancient olive trees of Homer's time exist alongside the undersea cables which provide the world's internet. In Cypria, named after a lost Cypriot epic which was the prequel to The Odyssey, British Cypriot writer Alex Christofi writes a deeply personal, lyrical and historical portrait and history of the island of Cyprus, from ancient times to the present day. This sprawling, evocative and poetic book begins with the legend of the cyclops - now thought to have come from the skeletons of elephants fossilized in the stone - and the tales and storytelling at the heart of the Mediterranean culture. Christofi travels to salt lakes, mosques and the eerie towns deserted at the start of the 1974 war. He retells the particularly bloody history of Cyprus during the twentieth century and consider his own identity as traveler and returner, as Odysseus was. Written in the same sensitive, witty and beautifully rendered prose as his last book Dostoevsky in Love, with a novelist's flair and eye for detail, Cypria combines the political, cultural and geographical history of Cyprus with reflections on time, place and belonging.

A revealing and beautifully illustrated critical edition of Gardner's collaged travel albums In 1865, art collector and philanthropist Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) lost her only child to pneumonia at less than two years old. In an effort to rouse her from depression, Gardner and her husband, Jack, travelled to northern Europe and Russia. It was the first of many trips abroad that would eventually take her from the Middle East to Asia-trips that she documented in exquisitely crafted collaged travel albums. Fellow Wanderer brings together nearly thirty of Gardner's striking travelogues, spanning some thirty-nine countries and offering invaluable perspective on the global influences on this legendary collector and patron of the arts. This book features beautiful facsimiles of Gardner's travel albums-largely unpublished until now-along with essays by leading scholars who place these diaries and sketchbooks within the context of the art and culture of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the nineteenth century. The essays explore a host of topics, such as Gardner's engagement with world religions while abroad, how she incorporated designs and ideas from around the globe into her Boston museum, and the ways in which the imperial power structures of the era facilitated her travels. Lushly illustrated, Fellow Wanderer provides a uniquely intimate look at how Gardner's rich and diverse experiences abroad instilled her collecting and patronage with a truly global vision of art. Distributed for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Exhibition Schedule Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston February 16-May 21, 2023

Lose yourself in this vivid travelogue evoking the historic Mediterranean island of Sicily by the king of travel writing and real-life family member of The Durrells in Corfu. 'A magician.' The Times Despite decades spent poetically chronicling Mediterranean life in Rhodes, Cyprus and Corfu, celebrated travel writer Lawrence Durrell had never set foot on the largest island: Sicily. For years, his friend Martine begged him to visit her on this sun-kissed paradise, but it took her sudden death to finally bring him to its shores - and he is not disappointed. Joining an eccentric tour group, Durrell immerses himself in the island's spectacular archaeological remains, and becomes dizzy with Sicily's rich history: its mysterious myths and meanings. Featuring unpublished poems and illustrated with elegant engravings. Sicilian Carousel is a gem that ranks with Durrell's finest work. 'Readers who have been to Sicily will love this book. Readers who have not been to Sicily will love this book.' Paul Fussell 'Like long letters from a civilized and very funny friend - the prose as luminous as the Mediterranean air he loves.' Time

Centred around three journeys to Mount Athos, one of the most important places in Orthodox Christianity, this is both a beautifully nuanced travel book and a journey of self-discovery in a world beset by violence and fear. Mount Athos is the spiritual home of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and for more than ten centuries this monastic community in northern Greece has been a centre for contemplative life, a staging ground for mystical visions and teachings, and a watch tower for Byzantium. A world unto itself, which has existed almost unchanged since medieval times, the theocratic state of Athos is a spiritual haven which stands in dramatic counterpoint to the contemporary world. Even time is calculated differently here -- Athos rejects the Julian calendar and clocks are reset every day to Byzantine time -- midnight falls at sunset. Christopher Merrill travelled to Mount Athos in search of spiritual renewal and a vision of eternity. At this unique intersection of modernity and Biblical tradition he discovered not only the enduring value of faith but also how much Athos has to teach us about the contemplative life, and found that eternity is located in the here and now. Journey to the Holy Mountain is a book rooted in spiritual crisis, which explores a route to salvation hitherto undocumented in a mainstream Western context. Out of spiritual desolation Merrill came to a deepening sense of the religious life, learning to recognize what have been described as 'the distinctive challenges and calls' of each monastic hour. The world of Mount Athos is closely guarded against intrusion by monk-policemen: no women, or even female animals, are allowed on Athos and the number of visitors is severely restricted. Christopher Merill describes, in vivid scenes and stories, the daily life ritual and scenery of a place which most will never be able to visit.

A memoir from Irma Kurtz, the author of "The Great American Bus Ride" and internationally renowned agony aunt. In 1954 18 year-old Irma Kurtz left New Jersey to travel across Europe, intent on transforming herself and changing the world. She looked to the Old World for an alternative destiny to that mapped out by the traditional expectations at home. On her post-war grand tour she found what she believed in: art and culture, and beauty and love, and some horror as a Jewish girl encountering the seat of much of her family's destruction. Two years ago, sifting through a cardboard box filled with memories at her mother's house, she rediscovered the journal of her first journey, the one that marked the beginning of a life of writing and living abroad. Gripped by intense recollections of sailing across the Atlantic, and intrigued by the exuberant remarks of her adventurous younger self, she decided to leave her London home and retrace her footsteps, this time with herself as a guide. Testing her theory that older women are invisible, Kurtz's journey is peppered with acute observations of human behaviour, not to mention some sharp advice for her ghostly travel companion, a teenager who t

'Both moving and hilarious' Spectator, Books of the Year 'A tale of gloriously eccentric British pensioners. Aitken rivals Alan Bennett in the ear he has for an eavesdropped remark ... boy, can he write.' Daily Mail, Book of the Week FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE TIMES BESTSELLING A CHIP SHOP IN POZNAN. One millennial, six coach trips, one big generation gap. When Ben Aitken learnt that his gran had enjoyed a four-night holiday including four three-course dinners, four cooked breakfasts, four games of bingo, a pair of excursions, sixteen pints of lager and luxury return coach travel, all for a hundred pounds, he thought, that's the life, and signed himself up. Six times over. Good value aside, what Ben was really after was the company of his elders - those with more chapters under their belt, with the wisdom granted by experience, the candour gifted by time, and the hard-earned ability to live each day like it's nearly their last. A series of coach holidays ensued - from Scarborough to St Ives, Killarney to Lake Como - during which Ben attempts to shake off his thirty-something blues by getting old as soon as possible.

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.

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