“There was nowhere to go but everywhere.” —Jack Kerouac From Duncan Minshull, the UK’s “laureate of walking,” a collection of more than fifty writings about hiking the globe from contemporary and classic authors such as Mark Twain, William Boyd, Edith Wharton, Helen Garner, Rabindranath Tagore, and many more. Following on from the success of Beneath My Feet: Writers on Walking and Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe, the UK’s ‘laureate of walking,’ Duncan Minshull, brings together the recorded footfalls of more than fifty walker-writers who have travelled the world’s seven continents. From the 1500s to current times come a memorable band of explorers and adventurers, scientists and missionaries, pleasure-seekers and literary drifters recalling their experiences and asking themselves a compelling question—why travel this way in the first place? With contributions from Herman Melville, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Vernon Lee, Sarah H. Bradford, Rabindranath Tagore, D. H. Lawrence, Isabella Bird, Katherine Mansfield, Rachel Carson, Helen Garner, Jean-Paul Clébert, Colin Thubron, William Boyd, and many more, Globetrotting takes us across the streets of London, Rome, Melbourne, Cairo, Kiev and Kabu; through the frozen wastes of Antarctica; along the pilgrim paths of Japan; into the jungles of Ghana; and around the Great Wall of China.

This latest collection of walking literature from Notting Hill Editions celebrates the allure of the Continent. On foot the world comes our way. We get close to the Continent's alpine ranges, arterial rivers, expansive coastlines. Close to its ancient cities and mysterious thoroughfares; and close to the walkers themselves-the Grand Tourers and explorers, strollers and saunterers, on their hikes and quests, parades and urban drifts. Sauntering features sixty walker-writers-classic and current-who roam Europe by foot. Twenty-two countries are traversed. We join Henriette d'Angeville, the second woman to climb Mont Blanc; Nellie Bly roaming the trenches of the First World War; Werner Herzog on a personal pilgrimage through Germany; Hans Christian Andersen in quarantine; Joseph Conrad in Cracow; Rebecca Solnit reimagining change on the streets of Prague; and Robert Macfarlane dropping deep into underground Paris. Contributors include: Patrick Leigh Fermor; John Hillaby; Robert Walser; Henriette d'Angeville; Joseph Roth; Joanna Kavenna; Richard Wright; Werner Herzog; Robert Antelme; George Sand; Rainer Maria Rilke; Robert Macfarlane; Rebecca Solnit; Kate Humble; Nicholas Luard; Edith Wharton; Elizabeth von Armin; Joseph Conrad; D. H. Lawrence; Vernon Lee; Guy Debord, Mark Twain, Thomas Coryat, and more.

The Independent Best Book for Walkers 2022 Where can a walk take you? It goes without saying, walking can connect us to our surroundings and free us from our worries. It can raise our heart rate and relax our minds. It can lead us across historic ground and inspire new thinking. In this beautiful collection, twenty outstanding writers set out with old memories and new adventures. ‘I’ve always hated walking,’ Harland Miller offers as his precis, while Ingrid Persaud and Agnes Poirier consider the rituals of pilgrimage and protest march. ‘It isn’t a walking city,’ Kamila Shamsie writes of Karachi, though she strides across it regardless. On the shores of Foulness Island, Will Self hopes to avoid landmines. In a forest north of Berlin, Jessica J. Lee gets soaked, then lost. And pacing around Delhi, Keshava Guha is interrupted by a husky. ‘During the pandemic of 2020,’ he writes, looking back. ‘He was the only thing I hugged.’ These are stories to dip into, from all walks of life. Together they capture the magic and opportunity that can arrive when you put one foot in front of the other. This collection features Tim Parks, Kamila Shamsie, Will Self, Nicholas Shakespeare, Irenosen Okojie, Ingrid Persaud, AL Kennedy, Cynan Jones, Sally Bayley, Joanna Kavenna, Kathleen Rooney, Richard Ford, Harland Miller, Keshava Guha, Agnès Poirier, Josephine Rowe, Sinead Gleeson, Pico Iyer, Patrick Gale and Jessica J. Lee.

`Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of wellbeing and walk away from every illness.' Soren Aaby Kierkegaard Duncan Minshull has always walked, and in the last twenty years has made use of it by writing and publishing books on the subject. He has described the whys, hows and wheres of traveling on foot for various magazines and newspapers including The Times, The Financial Times, Conde Nast Traveller, Vogue, The Lady, Psychologies. He has edited two other collections on walking: While Wandering (originally The Vintage Book of Walking) and The Burning Leg. Walking and writing have always gone together. Think of the poets who walk out a rhythm for their lines and the novelists who put their characters on a path. But the best insights, the deepest and most joyous examinations of this simple activity are to be found in non-fiction - in essays, travelogues and memoir. Beneath My Feet: Writers On Walking rounds up the most memorable walker-writers from the 1700's to the modern day, from country hikers to urban strollers, from the rationalists to the truly outlandish. Follow in the footsteps of William Hazlitt, George Sand, Rebecca Solnit, Will Self and dozens more. Keep up with them - and be astonished.