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Books > Travel > Travel writing
Born Adventurer tells the story of Frank Bickerton (1889-1954), the
British engineer on Sir Douglas Mawson's Australasian Antarctic
Expedition of 1911-14. The expedition gave birth to what Sir
Ranulph Fiennes has called 'one of the greatest accounts of polar
survival in history' and surveyed for the first time the 2,000-mile
stretch of coast around Cape Denison, which later became Adelie
Land. The MBE was, however, only one episode in a rich and
colourful career. Bickerton accompanied the ill-fated Aeneas
Mackintosh on a treasure island hunt to R.L. Stevenson's Treasure
Island, was involved with the early stages of Sir Ernest
Shackleton's ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, and
tested 'wingless aeroplanes' in Norway. Born Adventurer follows him
through his many experiences, from his flying career in the First
World War to his time in California, mixing with the aristocracy of
the Hollywood and sporting worlds, and from his safaris in Africa
to his distinguished career as an editor and screenplay writer at
Shepperton Studios. Stephen Haddelsey draws on unique access to
family papers and Bickerton's journals and letters to give us a
rich and full account of this incredible adventurer and colourful
man.
A fascinating, lyrical account of an east-west walk across
Britain's westernmost and most mysterious region. A distant and
exotic Celtic land, domain of tin-miners, pirates, smugglers and
evocatively named saints, somehow separate from the rest of our
island... Few regions of Britain are as holidayed in, as well-loved
or as mythologized as Cornwall. From the woodlands of the Tamar
Valley to the remote peninsula of Penwith – via the wilderness of
Bodmin Moor and coastal villages where tourism and fishing find an
uneasy coexistence – Tim Hannigan undertakes a zigzagging journey
on foot across Britain's westernmost region to discover how the
real Cornwall, its landscapes, histories, communities and sense of
identity, intersect with the many projections and tropes that
writers, artists and others have placed upon it. Combining
landscape and nature writing with deep cultural inquiry, The
Granite Kingdom is a probing but highly accessible tour of one of
Britain's most popular regions, juxtaposing history, myth, folklore
and literary representation with the geographical and social
reality of contemporary Cornwall.
In Bed with the Atlantic is a travel memoir of a young woman, Kit
Pascoe, as she goes from never having stepped on a yacht, to
sailing over 18,000 miles - across the Atlantic, around the
Caribbean and then back - in three years with her partner. At
first, she was dogged by doubt, a belief that she wasn't a
`sailor', never would be and that she was in no way capable of such
an undertaking. She believed that the ocean was out to get her,
that weather needed to be battled and that she would forever be
ruled by the anxiety that plagued her. Woven into the narrative of
the journey's progression are stories from Kit's childhood and life
before the voyage, explaining her battles with anxiety and the
feelings of being lost as a graduate in post-recession Britain. The
book also relays her struggle with reconciling a life of travel
with the expectations and experiences of those back home, at an age
when most of her contemporaries were starting corporate careers and
families. In her courage to leave everything she knows behind, she
learns the history of the islands and their people, swims with
turtles, explores strange cave systems, and learns to forage for
food straight from the sea. But she also encounters hardships like
running out of food and water, battling against storms, trying not
to be struck by lightning, and discovering the crippling loneliness
of sailing an ocean for months on end. Sailing back to the UK after
three years Kit realises the colossal difference that sailing has
made to her life and understanding of the world. She ponders how
easy it is not to do something, to protect ourselves from risks and
ridicule and everything that makes us uncomfortable. But now
appreciates that it is only when we take the risk, that we get the
reward and that we connect not just with the world at large, but
also with ourselves.
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.
This book is without a doubt the most remarkable true account ever
written of adventure in Africa. It is the story of the life of
George Rushby, an adventurer, ivory hunter, prospector, game
rancher who immigrated to SA from Britain in search of a new life
and all the curious and violent events that befell him until as a
game ranger of Tanganyika. He faced and defeated the lion man-eters
of the Njombe district. George Rushby vows to rid the land of these
man-eaters, but he soon discovers they are unlike any lions he has
ever encountered. He gets no help in his fight from the villagers
who believe the killings to be the work of the local witchdoctor, a
man they fear to cross - when a child Rushby loves is killed, the
battle becomes personal. The reader is transported into a world of
tumultuous events, many of which baffle all rational thought.
George Rushy was duly referred to as "the prince of adventurers"
and we join him on his travels and experiences in Africa.
First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
A New York Times Bestseller To some people, Florida is a paradise;
to others, a punch line. As Oh, Florida! shows, it's both of these
and, more important, it's a Petri dish, producing trends that end
up influencing the rest of the country. Without Florida there would
be no NASCAR, no Bettie Page pinups, no Glenn Beck radio rants, no
USA Today, no "Stand Your Ground," ...You get the idea. To
outsiders, Florida seems baffling. It's a state where the voters
went for Barack Obama twice, yet elected a Tea Party candidate as
governor. Florida is touted as a carefree paradise, yet it's also
known for its perils--alligators, sinkholes, pythons, hurricanes,
and sharks, to name a few. It attracts 90 million visitors a year,
some drawn by its impressive natural beauty, others bewitched by
its manmade fantasies. Oh, Florida! explores those contradictions
and shows how they fit together to make this the most interesting
state. It is the first book to explore the reasons why Florida is
so wild and weird--and why that's okay. But there is far more to
Florida than its sideshow freakiness. Oh, Florida! explains how
Florida secretly, subtly influences all the other states in the
Union, both for good and for ill.
By a winner of the Stanford Dolman Award for Travel Writing
"Sayarer is a precise and passionate writer . . . We need writers
who will go all the way for a story, and tell it with fire. Sayarer
is a marvellous example" HORATIO CLARE On the eve of its centenary
year and elections that will shape the coming generations, Julian
Emre Sayarer sets out to cycle across Türkiye, from the Aegean
coast to the Armenian border. Meeting Turkish farmers and workers,
Syrian refugees and Russians avoiding conscription, the journey
brings to life a living, breathing, cultural tapestry of the place
where Asia, Africa and Europe converge. The result is a love letter
to a country and its neighbours - one that offers a clear-eyed view
of Türkiye and its place in a changing world. Yet the route is
also marked by tragedy, as Sayarer cycles along a major fault line
just months before one of the most devastating earthquakes in the
region's modern history. Always engaged with the big historical and
political questions that inform so much of his writing, Sayarer
uses his bicycle and the roadside encounters it allows to bring
everything back to the human level. At the end of his journey we
are left with a deeper understanding of the country, as well as the
essential and universal nature of political power, both in Türkiye
and closer to home.
In 1930, two novice paddlers - Eric Sevareid and Walter C Port -
launched a second-hand 18-foot canvas canoe into the Minnesota
River at Fort Snelling for an ambitious summer-long journey from
Minneapolis to Hudson Bay. Without benefit of radio, motor, or good
maps, the teenagers made their way over 2250 miles of rivers,
lakes, and difficult portages. Nearly four months later, after
shooting hundreds of sets of rapids and surviving exceedingly bad
conditions and even worse advice, the ragged, hungry adventurers
arrived in York Factory on Hudson Bay - with winter freeze-up on
their heels. First published in 1935, "Canoeing with the Cree" is
Sevareid's classic account of this youthful odyssey. The newspaper
stories that Sevareid wrote on this trip launched his distinguished
journalism career, which included more than a decade as a
television correspondent and commentator on the CBS Evening News.
It is now with a new foreword by Arctic explorer, Ann Bancroft.
We get to share in his personal discoveries through the humour and
good fellowship of the road, full of entertaining misadventures.
But there is never any doubt that there is an ultimate purpose to
these journeys: a passionate need to bear witness to the truth
about the past, after centuries of persecution by an alien ruling
class. So through the dense clouds of historical tragedy, Wright
exchavates hope that a revival of pride and dignity in Andean
culture is possible.
Growing is a portrait of a young man sent straight out from
university to help govern Ceylon. It is doubtful that any Empire at
any time has been served by such an intelligent, dutiful,
hardworking and incorruptible civil servant as the young Leonard
Woolf. He was determined to do what was good but discovered for
himself that colonial rule, be it ever so high-minded, is fated to
do wrong. Growing is also a deeply affectionate account of the
mystery, magic and savage beauty of Ceylon at the turn of the
century, an island whose diverse beliefs and cultures Woolf had the
time and wit to explore in detail.
Seven years after her mother's death, Leonie Charlton is still
gripped by memories of their fraught relationship. In May 2017,
Leonie trekked through the Outer Hebrides in the company of a
friend and their Highland Ponies in search of closure. When
Leonie's pony has a serious accident, she begins to realise that
finding peace with her mother is less important than letting go.
Leonie Charlton blends travel and nature writing with intimate
memoir in this beautifully written account of grief and acceptance.
This is the first travel book that tested the idea that a
five-year-old daughter makes for a useful international travelling
companion. Together Dervla Murphy and her daughter Rachel with
little money, no taste for luxury and few concrete plans meander
their way slowly south from Bombay to the southernmost point of
India, Cape Comorin. Interested in everything they see, but only
truly enchanted by people, they stay in fisherman's huts and
no-star hotels, travelling in packed-out buses, on foot and by
local boats. Instead of pressing ever onwards, like so many
travellers, they double back to the place they liked most, the hill
province of Coorg and settle down to live there for two months.
Anchored by her daughter's delight in the company of her Indian
neighbours, Dervla Murphy creates an extraordinarily affectionate
portrait of these cardamon-scented, spiritually and agriculturally
self- sufficient Highlands. If travel is underwritten by an
unwitting search for a lost paradise, this is a quest that was
achieved - made possible with the right sort of travelling
companion.
A Place Apart is a remarkable geographical and psychological
travelogue that rises above history, politics, theology and
economics. Created by a southern Irishwoman, cycling into the
mayhem of Northern Ireland in order to try and sort out her own
opinions and emotions about this troubled land. She came equipped
with her own childhood experiences of murder and Republican
martyrdom, but was otherwise unfettered by sectarian loyalties and
armed with a delightful curiosity, a fine ear for anecdote, an
ability to stand her own at the bar and penetrating intelligence.
She travelled extensively through both town and country, frequently
finding herself in horrifying situations, and sometimes among
people stiff with hate and grief: but equally, she discovered an
unquenchable spirit everywhere that refused to die. Other Dervla
Murphy titles published by Eland. Original Hardbacks: A Month by
the Sea: Encounters in Gaza, The Island that Dared: Journeys in
Cuba, Eland Classics: Wheels within Wheels, Full Tilt: From Ireland
to India with a Bicycle, In Ethiopia with a Mule, Where the Indus
is Young: A Winter in Baltistan, Tibetan Foothold, The Waiting
Land: A Spell in Nepal, On a Shoestring to Coorg.
"Voices of the Old Sea" is Lewis' masterly description of the Costa
Brava on the cusp of tourist development in the 1950s, a place
where men regulated their lives by the sardine shoals of spring and
autumn and the tuna fishing of summer, and where women kept goats
and gardens, arranged marriages and made ends meet.
A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's fascinating guide to Europe's
rail network. Bradshaw's descriptive railway handbook of Europe was
originally published in 1913 and was the inspiration behind Michael
Portillo's BBC television series 'Great Continental Railway
Journeys'. It is divided into three sections: timetables for
services covering the continent; short guides to the best places to
see and to stay in each city; and a wealth of advertisements and
ephemeral materials concerning hotels, restaurants and services
that might be required by the early twentieth century rail
traveller. This beautifully illustrated facsimile edition offers a
fascinating glimpse of Europe and of a transport network that was
shortly devastated by the greatest war the world had ever seen.
From 1917 19, the Tharaud brothers immersed themselves in Morocco
while observing the determined imposition of the French
Protectorate at first hand. With unique access to both colonial
manoeuvres and a now-vanished Moroccan way of life, they settled
for periods in Marrakesh, Rabat and Fez to absorb and observe. We
join them on visits to the Sultan one day and to the shrine of Sidi
Ben Achir part shrine, part mental asylum on another. They watch
the son and heir of the Glaoui dynasty die from wounds received in
a mountain battle, and lovers weaving and ducking across the
rooftops of Fez to reach their trysting place. This is the first
translation of these vivacious works into English, giving access to
the majesty, the squalor and above all the liveliness of this
extraordinary period of Moroccan history.
THE TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE
Drowned. Buried by sand. Decimated by plague. Plunged off a cliff.
This is the forgotten history of Britain's lost cities, ghost towns
and vanished villages: our shadowlands. 'A beautiful book, truly
original . . . It is a marvellous achievement.' IAN MORTIMER,
author of The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England 'Well
researched, beautifully written and packed with interesting
detail.' CLAIRE TOMALIN 'An exquisitely written, moving and elegiac
exploration.' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB 'Consistently interesting . . .
Green's passion and historical vision bursts from the page,
summoning up the past in surround sound and sensual prose.' CAL
FLYN, THE TIMES (author of Islands of Abandonment) Historian
Matthew Green travels across Britain to tell the forgotten history
of our lost cities, ghost towns and vanished villages. Revealing
the extraordinary stories of how these places met their fate - and
exploring how they have left their mark on our landscape and our
imagination - Shadowlands is a deeply evocative and dazzlingly
original account of Britain's past. 'An eloquent tour of lost
communities.' PD SMITH, GUARDIAN 'A haunting, lyrical tour around
the lost places of Britain.' CHARLOTTE HIGGINS, author of Under
Another Sky 'A miraculous work of resurrection, stinging in a
perpetual present'. IAIN SINCLAIR, author of The Gold Machine
'Beautifully written.' SUNDAY TIMES 'Startling.' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Splendid.' THE HERALD 'Compelling.' HISTORY TODAY 'Excellent.' THE
SPECTATOR 'Fascinating.' DAILY MAIL 'Accomplished.' CAUGHT BY THE
RIVER 'Outstanding.' MIRROR
Meanwhile don't push and squeeze is an account of the year that
writer spent teaching at a university in Hangzhou, China. Filled
with puzzlement and discovery, it is enriched by the writings of
Berold's enthusiastic students and those of his articulate
companion. Berold's passion for literature soon takes him well
beyond limits of his contract as a 'foreign expert'. This is a
wide-ranging and at times very funny title, filled with fresh,
startling images of 21st Century China. Robert Berold spent a year
teaching creative writing in China, and this is his poetic and
delightful record of that year.
'The frisky Oss appeared - the dancers and drummers in a kind of
shamanic trance (induced by a day of drumming, dancing and beer).
They were wilder than ever; the atmosphere was positively
Bacchanalian and I felt we had all become lost in a kind of
collective folk consciousness.' On two wheels across Britain 'Bard
on a Bike' Kevan Manwaring searches out the places and people who
mark the seasons and cycles in their own special way - in
ceremonies and festivals both private and public, large and
intimate, ancient and modern. Along the way, he experiences and
relates moments of sacred time found in the unlikeliest of places
and circumstances, showing how it is a state of mind that can be
experienced not only at sacred sites, but in the everyday. A
collection of reflections about being fully alive in the Twenty
First century, as much a useful guide for the curious, Turning the
Wheel is a wise and witty account of a leather-clad time-traveller.
A buoyant, bittersweet and often plaintively gorgeous travel memoir
by Raney, writer and founder of the famous Nickelodeon Theatre in
Santa Cruz, California. Raney's debut book follows the arc of a
year-long expedition around the world, launched in 1967, at the
height of "the summer of love in a summer of death". In San
Francisco, where the author lived with his wife JoAnne, hippies and
beatniks flooded the streets, and new reports arrived every day
from the bloody conflict in Vietnam. The couple decided to decamp
for Europe, where the dollar was strong and the possibilities
seemed endless. Along for the ride is Tarzan, a fiery dachshund,
and a baby boy named Eric Xerxes Raney, known as Zerky. For a
while, this quirky little family made its way across the Continent,
camping in open fields, cavorting on beaches and scrambling through
the Swiss Alps. The narrative is built on letters Raney wrote to
Zerky who would presumably be too young to remember the breadth of
these adventures -- and diary entries by JoAnne, a fastidious
chronicler of the far-flung. "That there might be a world beyond
Europe, a world you could drive to, was something that never
occurred to us until six months later", the author remembers, near
the beginning of the book. Soon enough, the Raneys caterwauled
through Turkey, Pakistan, India and lran -- a journey that would
prove difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate in these pitched
political times. In Kabul, Afghanistan, they vividly pick their
"way through random passageways and alleyways that were left
between buildings at the time of their construction". In Eastern
Turkey, they face down a gaggle of armed and angry soldiers. The
adventure quotient here is high, but the main ballast of the book
is emotional. Shortly after returning from the expedition, JoAnne,
pregnant with her second child, died of an aneurism, and within a
year, Zerky was killed while playing near his family's home. The
book remains as a testament to the power of the human spirit -- to
wander, endure and remember. A chronicle of travels through a
bygone world.
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