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.

For nearly forty years John Wilson travelled the length and breadth of Scotland as a school inspector. From orkney to campbeltown and Jura to Dundee, he visited hundreds of schools and met thousands of teachers and pupils. In these memoirs, first published in 1928, he paints an insightful yet humorous picture of life in the country's schools after the 1872 education Act, which brought free schooling for all Scottish children between the ages of five and ten.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER With a foreword by Diana Gabaldon. Two men. One country. And a lot of whisky. As stars of Outlander, Sam and Graham eat, sleep and breathe the Highlands on this epic road trip around their homeland. They discover that the real thing is even greater than fiction. Clanlands is the story of their journey. Armed with their trusty campervan and a sturdy friendship, these two Scotsmen are on the adventure of a lifetime to explore the majesty of Scotland. A wild ride by boat, kayak, bicycle and motorbike, they travel from coast to loch and peak to valley and delve into Scotland's history and culture, from timeless poetry to bloody warfare. With near-death experiences, many weeks in a confined space together, and a cast of unforgettable characters, Graham and Sam's friendship matures like a fine Scotch. They reflect on their acting careers in film and theatre, find a new awestruck respect for their native country and, as with any good road trip, they even find themselves. Hold onto your kilts... this is Scotland as you've never seen it before.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was an American poet whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride," "A Psalm of Life," "The Song of Hiawatha," "Evangeline," and "Christmas Bells." In 1839 he published "Hyperion," a book of travel writings discussing his trips abroad.

Part of a seven-volume facsimile set, this volume comprises firsthand accounts of France in the 1790s. It includes Helen Maria Williams' letters which narrate the fall of Robespierre in 1794 and her 1798 book on Switzerland which comments sceptically on the necessary coexistence of liberty with peace.

Adventure writer Richard Grant takes on "the most American place on Earth" the enigmatic, beautiful, often derided Mississippi Delta. Richard Grant and his girlfriend were living in a shoebox apartment in New York City when they decided on a whim to buy an old plantation house in the Mississippi Delta. This is their journey of discovery into this strange and wonderful American place. Imagine A Year In Provence with alligators and assassins, or Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil with hunting scenes and swamp-to-table dining. On a remote, isolated strip of land, three miles beyond the tiny community of Pluto, Richard and his girlfriend, Mariah, embark on a new life. They learn to hunt, grow their own food, and fend off alligators, snakes, and varmints galore. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters, blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Grant brings an adept, empathetic eye to the fascinating people he meets, capturing the rich, extraordinary culture of the Delta, while tracking its utterly bizarre and criminal extremes. Reporting from all angles as only an outsider can, Grant also delves deeply into the Delta's lingering racial tensions. He finds that de facto segregation continues. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families and good reasons for hope. Dispatches from Pluto is a book as unique as the Delta itself. It's lively, entertaining, and funny, containing a travel writer's flair for in-depth reporting alongside insightful reflections on poverty, community, and race. It's also a love story, as the nomadic Grant learns to settle down. He falls not just for his girlfriend but for the beguiling place they now call home. Mississippi, Grant concludes, is the best-kept secret in America.

Over twenty years ago, Sven Lindqvist, one of the great pioneers of a new kind of experiential history writing, set out across Central Africa. Obsessed with a single line from Conrad's The Heart of Darkness - Kurtz's injunction to 'Exterminate All the Brutes' - he braided an account of his experiences with a profound historical investigation, revealing to the reader with immediacy and cauterizing force precisely what Europe's imperial powers had exacted on Africa's peoples over the course of the preceding two centuries. Shocking, humane, crackling with imaginative energies and moral purpose, Exterminate All the Brutes stands as an impassioned, timeless classic. It is essential reading for anybody ready to come to terms with the brutal, racist history on which Europe built its wealth.

COLONSAY: ONE OF THE HEBRIDES. ITS PLANTS: THEIR LOCAL NAMES AND USES, LEGENDS, RUINS, AND PLACE-NAMES- GAELIC NAMES OF BIRDS, FISHES, ETC. CLIMATE, GEOLOGICAL FORMATION, ETC. by MURDOCH M C NEILL. First publshed in 1910. - PREFACE: A COLLECTION of the plants of his native island was begun by the writer in 1903, during a period of convalescence, and was continued as a recreation, from time to time, as occasion offered. In 1908 the idea of making use of the material accumulated and arranging it for publication was conceived, and to put it into effect a final endeavour was made that season to have the plant list of the island as complete as the circumstances would permit. In preparing the little volume for the press, the lack of works of reference was found a serious drawback. The following publications were found most helpful Bentham and Hookers British Flora Witherings English Botany Camerons Gaelic Names of Plants Hogans Irish and Scottish Gaelic Names ofHerbs, Plants, Trees, etc. Gregorys History of the West Highlands Oransay and its Monastery, by F. C. E. MXeill Colla Ciotach Mac Ghilleasbuig, by Prof. Mackinnon Celtic Monthly, Sept. 1903-Jan. 1904 Geikies Scenery of Scotland Notes on the Geology of Colon- say and Oransay, by Prof. Geikie The Two Earth-Movements of Colonsay, by W. B. Wright, B.A., F.G.S. Sketch of the Geology of the Inner Hebrides, by Prof. Heddle Journals of the Scottish Meteorological Society Address on the Climate of the British Isles, by A. Watt, M.A., etc... The writer trusts that much of the matter contained in the following pages may be regarded as typical of and applicable in many respects to the Western Islands as a whole. He would gladly have entered intogreater detail regarding the old-time industries, place-names, topography, traditions, and folk-lore of Colonsay, but the general reader may be of opinion that enough has been said on these matters in a work primarily intended to treat of the flora of the island. KILORAN, COLONSAY, . December 1909. M.M c . CONTENTS include: CHAP. PAGB 1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION . . . . . . 3 2. CLIMATE . . ... 45 3. GEOLOGICAL FORMATION . . . . . 54 4...

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness? In his vital, bewitching, inspiring classic, Robert Macfarlane sets out in search of the wildness that remains.

Of all those admirable and doughty Victorian lady-travellers Miss Amelia Edwards is surely one of the brightest lights, and this, her classic introduction to ancient Egypt, still stands up like an obelisk above the bulk of learned tomes and endlessly churned out travel guides. Straightened means obliged her to earn her living, and she was already a successful writer and a talented artist and musician when, in middle-age, bad weather unexpectedly changed her life. Her painting holiday in France sabotaged, she took a boat from Marseilles to Alexandria, and hired a dahabiyah to venture up the Nile. The rest of her life she devoted tirelessly to the setting-up of professional excavation in Egypt, founding the Egypt Exploration Fund (with Reginald Stuart Poole) and establishing the first chair of Egyptology in England at University College, initially occupied by her protege Flinders Petrie. Nothing of the contagious enthusiasm and wonder she conveys, as the beauties of Egypt are daily unfolded before her, is lost from the subsequent research and painstaking erudition she crams into these pages. The joy is as fresh as when first felt, and the reader feels privileged to share these experiences with her.

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.

When Sybil Hall Nowell set off from San Francisco one February morning in 1935 on a round-the-world trip with her husband Jack, the energetic American couple fell into the embrace of the British Empire with great gusto. As they traveled through Australia and New Zealand and then through Africa up to Britain they delighted in the formality, civility, and good manners that defined at least the surface of the British imperial experience. During their four-month voyage, Sybil Nowell studiously wrote letters home at every stop, describing this calm and orderly world. Sybil Nowell's letters, introduced and edited here by Robert N. White (her grandson) who has provided useful historical and political commentary, portray the easy complacency of Empire that came with power, privilege, and prestige.

This seven-volume facsimile set comprises first-hand accounts of France in the 1790s. Helen Maria William's letters narrate the fall of Robespierre in 1794 and her 1798 book on Switzerland comments sceptically on the necessary coexistence of liberty with peace. Charlotte West (who, like Williams, celebrated the fall of the Bastille but was later imprisoned by the Republic) records the corruption, paranoia and violence of the Terror both in the provinces and in Paris. All texts, the majority of which have never been republished, are reproduced in full, augmented by a substantial general introduction to each set, headnotes, endnotes, and a consolidated index in the final volume. Selected for their rarity, the texts are drawn from the unparalleled Chawton House Library collection; each facsimile page has been digitally cleaned and enhanced, significantly improving on the quality and legibility of the original.

Anthony Doerr has received many awards -- from the New York Public Library, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Library Association. Then came the Rome Prize, one of the most prestigious awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and with it a stipend and a writing studio in Rome for a year. Doerr learned of the award the day he and his wife returned from the hospital with newborn twins.

Exquisitely observed, Four Seasons in Rome describes Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats -- the chroniclers of Rome who came before him -- and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighborhood, whose clamor of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.

This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood, and a fascinating story of a writer's craft -- the process by which he transforms what he sees and experiences into sentences.

Do you love trains? Do you love adventure? If so, join Tom Chesshyre on his meandering rail journey across Europe from London to Venice. Escaping the rat race for a few happy weeks, Chesshyre indulges in the freedom of the tracks. From France (dogged by rail worker strikes), through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland, he travels as far east as Odessa by the Black Sea in Ukraine. With no set plans, simply a desire to let the trains lead the way, he heads back via Hungary, the Balkans and Austria. Along the way he enjoys many an encounter, befriending fellow travellers as well as a conductor or two. This is a love letter to Europe, written from the trackside.

This volume is not a guide of where to stay and what to do, rather it is a collection of writing that aims to invest the traveller with a cultural and historical background to Croatia, which will give life and meaning into the sights, sounds and tastes that the traveller will experience.

CONTENTS include: CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. BETWEEN ROME AND NAPLES l6 CHAPTER III. NAPLES NAPOLI ... 65 CHAPTER IV. EXCURSIONS WEST OF NAPLES. . . . . . .152 CHAPTER V. EXCURSIONS EAST OF NAPLES IQ2 CHAPTER VI. NOLA, AVELLINO, AND BENEVENTUM 247 CHAPTER VII. IN THE ABRUZZI . 26 1 vni CONTENTS. IN APULIA . . . . ... CHAPTER VIII. CHAPTER IX. . PAGE . . 284 IN MAGNA GRAECIA EASTERN CALABRIA . . . . 335 CHAPTER X. IN THE BASILICATA AND WESTERN CALABRIA . . . 359 SICILY . . . CHAPTER XL . . . . . . . .371 CHAPTER XII. SICILY THE EASTERN COAST . . . . ... CHAPTER XIII. 384 GIRGENTI AND THE SOUTHERN COAST . . . . . 457 CHAPTER XIV. PALERMO AND THE NORTHERN COAST ., ... 476 SOUTHERN ITALY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: THE attractions of Naples and its neighbourhood have always been familiar to travelling Englishmen, but, in publishing a book on the rest of Southern Italy, the author has an uncomfortable sense of sending forth what few will read, and fewer still will make use of on the spot. English travellers nearly always play at follow the leader, and there are probably not two hundred living who have ever explored the savage scenery of the Abruzzi, the characteristic cathe- drals of Apulia, or the historic sites of Magna Graecia. Except the admirable Unter-Italien of Gsell-fells, the Grande Grece of Frangois Lenormant, and the chapters on the Abruzzi, Apulia, and Naples, in the Italian Sculptors of C. C. Perkins, nothing of importance has been written about these places it has not been considered worth while even the beautiful illustrations in Lears Journal of a Landscape Painter have failed to attract a stream of travellers as far south as Calabria. The vastness and ugliness of the districts tobe traversed, the bareness and filth of the inns, the roughness of the natives, the torment of zinzare the terror of earthquakes, the insecurity of the roads from brigands, and the far more serious risk of malaria or typhoid fever from the bad water, are natural causes which have hitherto frightened strangers away from the south. But every year these risks are being mitigated, and some of the travellers along the southern railways to Sicily may perhaps now be induced to linger on the way, though, with the single exception of the hotel at Reggio, the inns in Calabria are still such as none but the hardiest tourists, will like to encounter, and all the lower sites are seldom free from fever. There is not, however, the same reason for hurrying through Apulia, which is generally healthy, and where the rapid improvement of the inns will soon permit archeologists to its explore wonderful old cities with comfort. Every year the glorious country between Rome and Naples is becoming better known. All the places near the Eternal City have been already fully described in Days near Rome, but they are more briefly noticed here, as all the cities north ofRome will henceforward be included in Cities of Central Italy. In the towns of the Alban, Sabine, Volscian, and Hernican hills, the accommodation is often poor, but the inns are for the most part clean, and travellers will almost always receive a genial and disinter ested welcome from the kind-hearted inhabitants. The Italy of artists is to be found more amongst these mountain districts than in any other part of the peninsula. Here the costumes still glow with colour, and the wonderful picturesqueness of the towns is only equalled by the exqui- sitebeauty and variety of the scenery. The way in which the national character alters, as Naples is approached, must be incredible to those who have not lived in Italy...

This exciting new series will bring together both classic texts and the writing of the leading Travel writers working today, which will inform and inspire the inquisitive traveller. It is an essential companion for anyone travelling to Sicily. Selected authors include: Herodotus, Patrick Brydone, Pirandello, Ann Radcliffe and D. H. Lawrence. This new series is not a guide of where to stay and what to do, rather it is collection of writing that aims to invest the traveller with a cultural and historical background to Syria, which will breath life and meaning into the sights, sounds and tastes that the inquisitive traveller will experience.

As read on BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week' Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 'Sherman's is a special book. Every sentence, every thought she has, every question she asks, every detail she notices, offers something. The Bells of Old Tokyo is a gift . . . It is a masterpiece.' - Spectator For over 300 years, Japan closed itself to outsiders, developing a remarkable and unique culture. During its period of isolation, the inhabitants of the city of Edo, later known as Tokyo, relied on its public bells to tell the time. In her remarkable book, Anna Sherman tells of her search for the bells of Edo, exploring the city of Tokyo and its inhabitants and the individual and particular relationship of Japanese culture - and the Japanese language - to time, tradition, memory, impermanence and history. Through Sherman's journeys around the city and her friendship with the owner of a small, exquisite cafe, who elevates the making and drinking of coffee to an art-form, The Bells of Old Tokyo presents a series of hauntingly memorable voices in the labyrinth that is the metropolis of the Japanese capital: An aristocrat plays in the sea of ashes left by the Allied firebombing of 1945. A scientist builds the most accurate clock in the world, a clock that will not lose a second in five billion years. A sculptor eats his father's ashes while the head of the house of Tokugawa reflects on the destruction of his grandfather's city ('A lost thing is lost. To chase it leads to darkness'). The result is a book that not only engages with the striking otherness of Japanese culture like no other, but that also marks the arrival of a dazzling new writer as she presents an absorbing and alluring meditation on life through an exploration of a great city and its people.

First published in 2006. A traveller's tale set in the islands of Samoa with the legendary traveller Robert Louis Stevenson as guide, this book is valuable not only for its enjoyment as a tale of adventure, but also for its record of Stevenson himself - a literacy figure more commonly seen as author and not subject.

Seeking a temporary escape from the city and a world gone mad, Alan Brown plots out a personal challenge: an epic coast-to-coast trip through the lonely interior of the Highlands. He traverses paths historic and new, eschewing creature comforts and high-tech gear, trusting his (mostly) serviceable bike and his own skills. Armed with the essentials and a sense of curiosity, he discovers more about nature, people, our country, risk and himself than he ever thought possible. Alan traces a route from Argyllshire's Loch Etive across remote Rannoch moors, dramatic Grampian terrain and the beautiful glens of Strathspey to reach the Moray Firth at Findhorn. Ready for all weathers and obstacles, he succumbs to the hypnotic daily routine of ride, eat, sleep, repeat. He's savouring the landscapes, the wildlife and the solitude, and relishing the self-reliance. He is also picking up clues to past lives and discovering how the land has been altered by industry and game sports or, sometimes, conserved for wildlife and trees.