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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

'Heads up - here's how to run like a pro' The Times 'A fascinating book' Adharanand Finn, author of Running With the Kenyans 'I'm convinced that Shane's insights were were instrumental in me winning the Marathon des Sables for a second time' Elisabet Barnes, coach and athlete 'Shane is the Indiana Jones of the running world' Damian Hall, ultra marathon runner 'You can't but help go out the door for your next run and try to put it all into practice' Nicky Spinks, endurance runner The Lost Art of Running is an opportunity to join running technique analyst coach and movement guru Shane Benzie on his journey across five continents as he trains with and analyses the running style of some of the most gifted athletes on the planet. Part narrative, part practical, this adventure takes you to the foothills of Ethiopia and the 'town of runners'; to the training grounds of world-record-holding marathon runners in Kenya; racing across the Arctic Circle and the mountains of Europe, through the sweltering sands of the Sahara and the hostility of a winter traverse of the Pennine Way, to witness the incredible natural movement of runners in these environments. Along the way, you will learn how to incorporate natural movement techniques into your own running and hear from some of the top athletes that Shane has coached over the years. Whether experienced or just tackling your first few miles, this groundbreaking book will help you discover the lost art of running.

An illustrated, behind-the-scenes travel journal of Anthony Bourdain's global adventures.
More than just a companion to the hugely popular show, "No Reservations" is Bourdain's fully illustrated journal of his far-flung travels. The book traces his trips from New Zealand to New Jersey and everywhere in between, mixing beautiful, never-before-seen photos and mementos with Bourdain's outrageous commentary on what really happens when you give a bad-boy chef an open ticket to the world. Want to know where to get good fatty crab in Rangoon? How to order your reindeer medium rare? How to tell a Frenchman that his baguette is invading your personal space? This is your book. For any Bourdain fan, this is an indispensable opportunity to hit the road with the man himself.

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.

"A mesmerising trip across Central Asia . . . A fascinating travelogue" Financial Times SHORTLISTED FOR EDWARD STANFORD/LONELY PLANET DEBUT TRAVEL WRITER OF THE YEAR 2020 An unforgettable journey through the former Soviet Republics, by a prizewinning author of international reportage Erika Fatland takes the reader on a journey that is unknown to even the most seasoned globetrotter. The five former Soviet Republics' Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan all became independent when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991. How have these countries developed since then? In the Kyrgyzstani villages Erika Fatland meets victims of the widely known tradition of bride snatching; she visits the huge and desolate Polygon in Kazakhstan where the Soviet Union tested explosions of nuclear bombs; she meets Chinese shrimp gatherers on the banks of the dried out Aral Sea and she witnesses the fall of a dictator. She travels incognito through Turkmenistan, a country that is closed to journalists. She meets exhausted human rights activists in Kazakhstan, survivors from the massacre in Osh in 2010, German Menonites that found paradise on the Kyrgyzstani plains 200 years ago. During her travels, she observes how ancient customs clash with gas production and she witnesses the underlying conflicts between ethnic Russians and the majority in a country that is slowly building its future in Nationalist colours. In these countries, that used to be the furthest border of the Soviet Union, life follows another pace of time. Amidst the treasures of Samarkand and the bleakness of Soviet architecture, Erika Fatland moves with her openness towards the people and the landscapes around her. A rare and unforgettable travelogue. Translated from the Norwegian by Kari Dickson

A disabled foreigner in Japan, a society historically hostile to difference, Kenny Fries finds himself on a journey of profound self-discovery. As he visits gardens, experiences Noh and butoh, and meets artists and scholars, he discovers disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests, and atomic bomb survivors. When he is diagnosed as HIV positive, all his assumptions about Japan, the body, and mortality are shaken, requiring him to find a way to reenter life on new terms.

"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.

Evliya Celebi was the 17th century's most diligent, adventurous, and honest recorder, whose puckish wit and humor are laced throughout his ten-volume masterpiece. This brand new translation brings Evliya sparklingly back to life. "Well worth a read."-Irish Echo 7/2011

This largely unknown travel book, written by a sporting and hunting enthusiast in 1896, recalls his journey with his wife and two dachshunds in what was then a largely unknown part of Europe. Not even Thomas Cook had conducted tours east of Trieste, and our two travelers were exploring territory less well known to the Victorian traveler at the time than Egypt or Brazil.

Tales of the Road is a collection of delightful travel vignettes. The author describes many odd, strange and curious events which befell him as he was visiting different places in the world over the past fifty years. Its pages are filled with unusual and interesting characters like the very tall transsexual in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a generous subway security guard in Rome, Italy, an angry lady cyclist in Bremerhaven, Germany, and a money hungry taxi driver in Beijing, China, to name only a very few. The volume is illustrated (by the author) with whimsical drawings that give the book charm, depth and just the right touch of humor.