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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing
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.
'A nostalgic experience, informative, humorous, charming, but
pervaded by the bitter-sweet scent of regret' Daily Mail 'Fort has
an eye for the quirky, the absurd, the pompous and a style that,
like the road, is always on the move' Sunday Telegraph 'A lovely
book...At last someone has celebrated the romance of the British
road' Guardian The A303 is more than a road. It is a story. One of
the essential routes of English motoring and the road of choice to
the West Country for thousands of holidaymakers, the A303 recalls a
time when the journey was an adventure and not simply about getting
there. In this fully revised and updated edition, Tom Fort gives
voice to the stories this road has to tell, from the bluestones of
Stonehenge, Roman roads and drovers paths to turnpike tollhouses,
mad vicars, wicked Earls and solstice seekers, the history,
geography and culture of this road tells a story of an English way
of life.
'A soaring gift of a book' Owen Sheers 'Remarkable' Mark
Vanhoenacker, author of Skyfaring 'Stunning . . . a love letter to
nature' Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love The day
she flew in a glider for the first time, Rebecca Loncraine fell in
love. Months of gruelling treatment for breast cancer meant she had
lost touch with the world around her, but in that engineless plane,
soaring 3,000 feet over the landscape of her childhood, with only
the rising thermals to take her higher and the birds to lead the
way, she felt ready to face life again. And so Rebecca flew,
travelling from her home in the Black Mountains of Wales to New
Zealand's Southern Alps and the Nepalese Himalayas as she chased
her new-found passion: her need to soar with the birds, to push
herself to the boundary of her own fear. Taking in the history of
unpowered flight, and with extraordinary descriptions of flying in
some of the world's most dangerous and dramatic locations, Skybound
is a nature memoir with a unique perspective; it is about the land
we know and the sky we know so little of, it is about memory and
self-discovery. Rebecca became ill again just as she was finishing
Skybound, and she died in September 2016. Though her death is
tragic, it does not change what Skybound is: a book full of hope.
Deeply moving, thrilling and euphoric, Skybound is for anyone who
has ever looked up and longed to take flight. Shortlisted for the
Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award 2018.
No further information has been provided for this title.
Along with his companions from nine nations, Heyerdahl set sail in
a boat made of reeds in search of the sea routes which he was sure
must have been used by the Sumerians in vessels like his own, 5000
years ago. Heyerdahl recounts the many discoveries and hazards that
occurred on his journey down the Tigris, through the Gulf and on to
the Indian Ocean - tales of modern shipping, bandits, reefs and the
political dispute which finally led to the ceremonial burning of
the boat.
In this unique book, part eulogy, part history, part travelogue,
Charlie English goes in search of the best snow on the planet.
Along the way he explains the extraordinary hold this commonplace
phenomenon has over us, and reveals the ongoing drama of our
relationship with it. Combining on-the-slopes experience with
off-piste research, Charlie English's journey begins with the
magical moment when his two-year-old son sees snow for the first
time, before setting off in the footsteps of the Romantic poets
over the Alps, following the sled-tracks of the Inuit across
Greenland, and meeting up with a flurry of fellow enthusiasts, from
snow-making scientists in Japan and global warming experts in
California to plough drivers in Alaska.This is a book for anyone
who reaches for their mittens at the sight of the first flake.
From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, a compelling
account of her return to the land in which she grew up. In 1956,
some seven years after departed for England, Doris Lessing returned
home to Southern Rhodesia. It was a journey that was both personal
- a revisiting of a land and people she knew - and, inevitably,
political: Southern Rhodesia was now part of the Central African
Federation, where the tensions between colonialism and
self-determination were at their most deeply felt. 'Going Home' is
a book that combines journalism, reportage and memoir, humour,
farce and tragedy; a book fired by the love of one of the twentieth
century's greatest writers for a country and a continent that she
felt compelled to leave.
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.
Lose yourself in this dazzling travelogue of the idyllic Greek
Islands by the king of travel writing and real-life family member
of The Durrells in Corfu. 'Incandescent.' Andre Aciman 'A
magician.' The Times 'Invades the reader's every sense ...
Remarkable.' Victoria Hislop 'Nobody knows the Greek islands like
Durrell.' New York Times White-washed houses drenched in pink
bougainvillea; dazzling seascapes and rugged coastlines; colourful
harbours in quaint fishing villages; shady olive and cypress
groves; terraces bathed in the Aegean sun ... The Greek islands
conjure up a treasure-chest of images - but nobody brings them to
life as vividly as the legendary travel writer Lawrence Durrell. It
was during his youth in Corfu - which his brother Gerald
fictionalised in My Family and Other Animals, later filmed as The
Durrells In Corfu - that his love affair with the Mediterranean
began. Now, in this glorious tour of the Greek islands, he weaves
evocative descriptions of these idyllic landscapes with insights
into their ancient history, and shares luminous personal memories
of his time in the local communities. No traveller to Greece or
admirer of Durrell's magic should miss it. 'Masterly ... Casts a
spell.' Jan Morris 'Charming ... Delightful.' Sunday Times 'Our
last great garlicky master of the vanishing Mediterranean.' Richard
Holmes 'Like long letters from a civilized and very funny friend -
the prose as luminous as the Mediterranean air he loves.' Time
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.
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Cry of the Kalahari
(Paperback)
Delia Owens, Mark Owens; Introduction by Ben Fogle
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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
Over the summer of 2011, Dervla Murphy spent a month in the Gaza
Strip. She met liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters,
rich and poor. Used to western reporters dashing in and out of the
Strip in times of crisis, the people she met were touched by her
genuine, unflinching interest and spoke openly to her about life in
their open-air prison. What she finds are a people who, far from
the story we are so often fed, overwhelmingly long for peace and an
end to the violence that has so grossly distorted their lives. The
impression we take away from the book is of a people whose real,
complex, nuanced voice has rarely been heard before. A MONTH BY THE
SEA gives unique insight into the way in which isolation has shaped
this society: how it radicalises young men and plays into the hands
of dominating patriarchs, yet also how it hardens determination not
to give in and turns family into a towering source of support.
Underlying the book is Dervla's determination to try to understand
how Arab Palestinians and Israeli Jews might forge a solution and
ultimately live in peace. Dervla looks long and hard at the
hypocrisies of Western and Israeli attitudes to peace', and at
Palestinian attitudes to terrorism. While this shattered people
long for a respite from the bombings that have ripped a hole, both
literally and psychologically, in their world, it seems that
politicians have an agenda that pays little attention to their
plight.
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