Travel
Ox Travels by Michael Palin
Ox Travels is an anthology of travel writing compiled to raise funds for Oxfam, but it is well worth buying and reading in its own right. Its generous 432 pages offer the chance to meet 36 writers, including travel writers, journalists and novelists, with an introduction by Michael Palin and an afterword by Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's Chief Executive. Full review...
Out Of Africa by Karen Blixen
It's more than a quarter of a century since I first saw the film Out of Africa and it's one of the few that have stayed with me over the intervening years. It wasn't just the story, but the personality of Karen Blixen and the wonderful landscape of the Ngong Hills, south of Nairobi, in Kenya's Rift Valley. I remember looking for this book at the time, but being unable to find it, so the opportunity to read it now was too good to miss. Full review...
Access All Areas: Selected Writings 1990-2010 by Sara Wheeler
This is a great book to acquire if your general knowledge of historical adventurers is as haphazard as mine. Somewhere along the line, I'd missed out on Scott and Shackleton, and it's very satisfying indeed to fill those gaps from such a reliable informant. One brisk section, for example, managed to encapsulate both Antartica's history and further outlook, along with sufficient atmospheric detail to ensure we mortals understood just what it feels like to sleep in Scott's hut during a wintry gale. Full review...
Chasing the Devil: On Foot Through Africa's Killing Fields by Tim Butcher
Tim Butcher's day job from 1990 to 2009 was "journalist".
I wonder what today's school-kids imagine when they say they want to be a journalist… do they envisage writing about science, or economics, or celebrities, or do they see themselves as television reporters standing in flak jackets doing the obligatory piece-to-camera in the latest war zone? Do they even read newspapers any more? Do they realise that there are still also people out there in those war zones, without the glamour flak-jacket, just (if they're lucky) the ordinary pock-marked one, that they prefer not to wear because it's way too hot? People who still ply the classic trade of actually writing what they see and trusting that they can do it well enough for the words to stand alone without the sound effects, without (quite often) any pictures, to make it "real"? Full review...
On The Slow Train Again by Michael Williams
A few years ago Michael Williams, the railway expert who's written for numerous newspapers and magazines on the subject, released a book called On The Slow Train about some of Britain's best railway trips. With far too many journeys to fit into one volume, he's given us a dozen more in this sequel. Full review...
Wild Coast: Travels on South America's Untamed Edge by John Gimlette
Apart from knowing that it borders Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname, a fact hammered into me in Year 8 Geography, I know very little about Guiana. And while you may think that's understandable, I'm not sure that it is, seeing as I read this book while living just two countries over. The thing is, it's a sort of tiny, forgotten country, isn't it? Over the years it has been involved in border disputes, has come under various nations' rule, and has changed names more often the P Diddy, and even after you take all that into account, I bet you can't think of a single thing there to go and see. Full review...
Across Many Mountains: Three Daughters of Tibet by Yangzom Brauen and Katy Darbyshire
Fleeing your home can never be easy but when you are six, your only shoes are roughly hand-sewn and stuffed with hay, and your route is over the world's highest mountain range then it must be particularly challenging. This was the journey that Yangzom Brauen's mother took with her parents when they fled Tibet after the Chinese invasion of 1959. They were leaving behind all that they knew and travelling to India in the hope that they could find sanctuary in the country where the Dalai Lama was in exile. 'Across Many Mountains' is their story. Full review...
Zimbabwe in Pictures by Keith Hern
I'm a bit of an amateur photographer, and since the advent of digital cameras I always come back from holidays with thousands of photos, over-excited by the fact that I am no longer limited to 24 or 36 exposure films! I enjoy, therefore, flicking through photography books, to see the images that have captured someone else's imagination and to see if I can pick up any interesting framing ideas, or subject settings. Full review...
I Never Knew That About the River Thames by Christopher Winn
Here are the remains of the building that could be said to have sired two important British royal dynasties. Here is the place of ill-repute, where 'Rule Britannia' was premiered, and which also bizarrely saw a death by cricket ball that inspired the most famous gardens in the world. Here too is the largest lion in the world. To where am I referring? Well the answer is either the Thames valley, or this very book. Full review...
Race for the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford
In 1910 two European ships set out for the Antarctic. 'Terra Nova' was carrying British explorers under the leadership of Captain Robert Scott, while 'Fram' sailed with a rival Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen. The basic facts can be briefly summarized. Amundsen arrived at the South Pole on 14 December 1911 and returned home to a hero's welcome, while Scott reached the same destination 35 days later, only to perish with his men on the return journey. Their bodies were found by a search party some eight months after they had died. Full review...
Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands by Aatish Taseer
Aatish Taseer was born of out of a short week of passion between a Sikh Indian mother and a Pakistani Muslim father. The mother was a journalist; the father a politician.
That week of passion was to be all it was, despite subsequent attempts at hushing up the pregnancy, then pretending a marriage until finally a clean break was made when the boy was about 18 months old. Ah, but such breaks never are clean are they? There's always a certain amount of meddling from the side-lines, and then there's a child's longing to know who he is, where he is really from. Full review...
West: A Journey Through the Landscapes of Loss by Jim Perrin
Where would you go if the love of your life, and your son, both died within a short few months of each other? Jim Perrin headed West - to the scraggly patches of land off Ireland, closer to the setting sun, nearer to the further horizon, beyond the noise, information and opinion of humanity. Of course, that question could also be answered in a more metaphoric way. Jim went inward, before coming outward. He suffered - "involuntarily, the tears have come. Who would have thought that death would release so many.." He also, although he would probably hate me for saying it, went on a "psycho-geographical ramble" - both in life, and in making this book. Full review...
Delhi: Adventures in a Megacity by Sam Miller
Miller is probably one of the best people to take you on a tour of Delhi. He's not a native so has no in-bred partisanship, but he does love the place so will make sure you do too, but mainly because to begin with he HATED it… so he will understand if you don't share his ironic good humour about the shit squirter or the fact that sometimes the only way to cross the road is to take a rickshaw taxi. Full review...
Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Devon: A Complete Tour Guide and Companion by Brian W Pugh, Paul R Spiring and Sadru Bhanji
The Hound of the Baskervilles is one of the most famous mystery novels of all, and also one of the most famous English novels set in Devon. This alone would probably give more or less enough material for an entire book on connections between the story and the location which inspired it. Yet the authors have found several more links between the county, and Conan Doyle alongside those associated with him. The result has revealed much information of which even I, who have lived in the county nearly all my life, was previously unaware. Full review...
England 'Til I Die - A celebration of England's amazing supporters by David Lane
To start with, an admission. I am an English fan of football, but I am not a fan of England’s football squad. Hardly ever would I prefer to see the Three Lions triumphant. I never got into the habit, partly because I never saw the singularly English habit of supporting the underdog as making any sense. Plus you'll never get me standing up and singing that awful tune before the match. But here are testimonies from twenty or so people who see things completely differently to me. Full review...
In the Valley of Mist: Kashmir's Long War - One Family's Extraordinary Story by Justine Hardy
Kashmir. Is that not the most romantic of names? To those of us entranced by tales from the East, it echoes with the same essence of myth as Shang-ri-la – and for good reason. Geographically situated in the Himalaya but with the abundant fertility of the valley, lakes and meadows, it should be a kind of paradise. To the people who live there, it once was. Full review...
Sushi and Beyond: What the Japanese Know About Cooking by Michael Booth
Japanese food has a tendency to sound a bit freakish or even controversial. Raw fish? Octopus ice cream? Whale meat? Yet it is slowly infiltrating the UK with sushi conveyor belt restaurants popping up everywhere and noodle bars offering Westernised bowls of steaming noodles. In this book Michael Booth takes his wife and two young children to experience the real thing, travelling across the whole of Japan tasting an enormous range of foods and learning about their history, how the foods have been produced and are cooked and eaten. Full review...
The Magnetic North: Travels in the Arctic by Sara Wheeler
The title of this book suggests another travel book about adventure in the frozen north, but Sara Wheeler mixes her tales of her own travels with some history of polar exploration and a serious examination of the impact of visitors and of those who wish to exploit the Arctic’s natural resources on the region and its people. Rather than setting off on another expedition to reach the North Pole, she travels around bits of the Arctic divided between different countries and governments, including Chukotka (Russia), Alaska (USA), Canada, Greenland, Svalbard (Norway) and Lapland (Russia and Scandinavia). There is a huge amount of material in the book but Wheeler organises and presents it in a very readable, accessible style. Full review...
The Lotus Quest by Mark Griffiths
Mark Griffiths is one of Britain's leading plant experts. I know this because his brief biog in the front of The Lotus Quest tells me so; just as it tells me that he is the editor of The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening 'the largest work on horticulture ever published'. His prior works list includes five other plant book credits, three of them for the RHS. I shall take all of this on trust, since attempts to find out more about the author and his background through the usual internet search mechanisms has failed miserably. He remains as elusive as the sacred flower that is the subject of this latest work: the lotus. Full review...
Sacred Sierra: A Year on a Spanish Mountain by Jason Webster
Jason Webster and his partner, Salud searched and bought forty acres of valley and mountainside halfway up the Penyagolosa Ridge in Southern Spain, complete with two derelict sets of farm buildings. These mas, or smallholdings, formed the backbone of Spanish agriculture until young people abandoned rural life for towns in the mid-twentieth century. The agro-economics of the EEC enforced obsolescence of the mas system. As old timers retired or died, their farms were abandoned, leaving most of the land returning to wild. Full review...
Bangkok Days by Lawrence Osborne
Laurence Osborne has hit upon a bizarre way to save money on dentistry – pay for a month's rent in Bangkok and get his fillings done there, which works out cheaper than dental insurance in America. During the course of many visits to Thailand, he meanders around Bangkok, along with various other motley foreigners, passing through hospitals, brothels and mobile restaurants selling waterbugs. Full review...
Drinking Arak off an Ayatollah's Beard by Nicholas Jubber
closed doors and how people really think, challenging the idea that both countries are defined only by a religious fervour and fundamentalism that is the accepted way of life. At the heart of Jubber's quest is the epic poem of Persian culture, the Shahnameh which he soon learns all Iranians know and love and in doing so he unearths a vibrant culture that preceded the conversion of Persia to Islam and with it the transformation of Persia into Iran. Full review...
The Man of Passage by Ian Mathie
Ian Mathie's association with Africa began when his father was posted to what was then Northern Rhodesia when Mathie was just four years old. School was in a convent and was run by German and Italian nuns and for a while he was the only white child amongst a couple of hundred Africans. Even when he was joined by others he was still part of an ethnic minority although he didn't realise it! He was taught in the local language and grew up with the local children. It was his home and was to be the centre of his life for decades to come. Full review...
The Great Race: The Amazing Round-The-World Auto Race Of 1908 by Gary Blackwood
In 1908, Henry Ford's Model T hadn't yet brought cars to the masses. The pioneers of the world of automobiles were experimenting and discovering just what the car could do, by driving right round the world. Except they didn't want to be pioneers. One of the competitors, Antonio Scarfoglio, put it so perfectly when he said 'We had set out to perpetuate an act of splendid folly, not to open up a new way for men. We wished to be madmen, not pioneers.' Isn't that about the best quote you've ever read? Full review...
The Island That Dared: Journeys in Cuba by Dervla Murphy
In her latest literary outing, the now elderly and increasingly opinionated travel writer and veteran cyclist Dervla Murphy describes a series of trips to Cuba. The opening section deals with a family trip in late 2005. Readers who have followed Dervla's books from the beginning will have grown up with Rachel, the author's daughter, who accompanied her on a number of trips between the ages of five and eighteen. Now Dervla travels with Rachel and Rachel's three young daughters, Clodagh, Rose and Zea, known for ease throughout the book as the Trio. The middle section sees Dervla return alone to spend several months trekking in places such as the Sierra del Escambray mountains, and in the final third of the book, Dervla returns to the city of Santa Clara for the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary of the death of Ernesto Che Guevara. Full review...
The Rough Guide to Tuscany and Umbria by Jonathan Buckley, Mark Ellingham and Tim Jepson
There's a general Rough Guide to Italy, but revisiting again this regional guide in the process of writing up our trip to Tuscany two years ago, I was reminded of how good indeed this particular Rough Guide is. I bought it because I wanted to supplement the general Rough Guide to Italy I had with more detailed coverage of the region in which we were going to spend the whole trip - and I was extremely happy with the result. Full review...
Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea by Guy Delisle
Meet Guy. He's a French-Canadian animator, leaving home for a short stay in the capital of one of the world's most intriguing, unknown and alien cultures - Pyongyang, North Korea - so he can work on a TV cartoon co-production. Forced to stay in one of the three official hotels designed for foreigners, so that the locals and people such as he do not have to mix, he see glimpses of the unique socialist dictatorship, stunning views of the buildings forced through the poverty, and thousands of unreadable faces. Full review...
Right to the Edge: Sydney to Tokyo by Any Means by Charley Boorman
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but there seems a ever-diminishing sense of surprise with Charley Boorman's continuing adventures. One hopes at least they started with very daring, courageous, envelope-pushing exploits, where we might have doubted his success. Now he's on his fifth trip in as many years, BBC TV crew in hand as always, and we can hardly hope for much in the way of an ordeal, or doubt concerning a failure. And, as he admits, this does feel much like an add-on for his Ireland-to-Sydney trek. Full review...
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel by Rolf Potts
Rolf Potts is a travel writer as well as a bit of a backpacker guru and his book distils his experiences in, exactly as the title suggests, an uncommon guide to long-term travel. The operative word here is uncommon, as Vagabonding is not really a guide as we know them, more of a pep-talk combined with a resource list. Full review...
Western Balkans (Lonely Planet Multi Country Guide) by Marika McAdam
Lonely Planet does well from its multi-country guides as members of its peripatetic, Inter-railing, backpacker audience often 'do' more than one country (and sometimes a whole continent or region at least) within one trip. Full review...
European Rail Timetable Summer 2009 by Thomas Cook Publishing
This volume is an absolutely essential resource for anybody travelling in Europe by train. A compilation of all major train routes, it allows not only for checking train times but also planning pretty much every conceivable major journey. Theoretically, the train timetables change twice yearly, so it's worth getting an up to date book. Full review...
Europe on a Shoestring: Big Trips on Small Budgets (Lonely Planet Shoestring Guides) by Sarah Johnstone
Europe on a Shoestring comes from the vast stable of Lonely Planet's travel guides and is very much aimed at the budget end of the market. Comparable to its nearest competitor, Let's Go Europe, it's a one-volume backpacker bible which attempts to provide the overview of a whole continent, every single country and the main destinations in each of the countries. Full review...
Hops and Glory: One Man's Search for the Beer That Built the British Empire by Pete Brown
Being a beer writer can't be the easiest route to respect in journalism. But with this book Pete Brown has done much to counter the sceptical, even dismissive, attitudes which must surround his trade and its subject matter. He has attempted to combine a history of British imperialism and the brewing industry with the comic 'quest' genre of travel writing. Against all the odds, he has largely succeeded. Full review...
The Rough Guide to Amsterdam by Rough Guides
This Rough Guide is as comprehensive, up to date and well researched as most if not all Rough Guides seem to be. I have used numerous examples of their guides and I found them to be among the best if not the best ones there are. They do seem to have moved upmarket a bit since I first started to use them in the early 90s - but they still provide the best balance in descriptions covering practicalities, context, history, sightseeing, entertainment, drinking, clubbing and even (in Amsterdam at least) dope smoking. Full review...
Close to Holmes: A Look at the Connections Between Historical London, Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by Alistair Duncan
Even today, London is a remarkable compromise of the old and the new. As Alistair Duncan shows in this volume, the city of Conan Doyle and Holmes has changed – yet not changed. There have been a handful of books in the past on 'Holmes's London', but this is the first of its kind to place equal emphasis on places associated with the detective and his creator. Full review...
The Secret Life of France by Lucy Wadham
I'm rather at a loss to describe this book for you, and I'm still uncertain how to categorise it. It's part personal memoir and part analytical. Whether you regard this particular mix as brilliant or irritating is down, I suppose, to personal taste and intellectual curiosity. Full review...
All at Sea: One Man. One Bathtub. One Very Bad Idea: Conquering the Channel in a Piece of Plumbing by Tim Fitzhigham
Once more my life is made easy by saying this book does just what it claims on the cover - takes a narrator of zesty, wacky humour, throws him into an unlikely situation (a bath) and gets him to do something unusual (row it across the Channel - and then beyond). This despite the fact he was the world's worst sculler at University. Full review...
St Peter's (Wonders of the World) by Keith Miller
It is huge: not only in space but in time and structure; and in the non-material sphere of the complex interplay of meanings, symbols and significances. Miller's book, intentionally combining cultural and political history, art criticism and travel writing, manages to reflect that hugeness without weighting the reader down with too much austere detail. Full review...
Burma Chronicles by Guy Delisle
What we have here are a male househusband and artist, and his MSF doctor wife, and their life in Burma or Myanmar for roughly a year. We get to see the life in the country, from the racks of bootleg software, to the animation class he leads, to their efforts to get into the lush country clubs, to their baby being adored by every passing girl. We see the state of the country, with its horrid drugs, HIV/AIDS and malaria problems, hidden beyond the gentle Buddhist retreats. We see the Delisles' interaction with this singular country - the censored press, and the fact that their road is only made more busy because of the roadblock diverting everyone away from Aung San Suu Kyi's house a block away. Full review...
Darwin's Armada: Four Voyagers to the Southern Oceans and Their Battle for the Theory of Evolution by Iain McCalman
A look at Darwin's journey on The Beagle, as well as journeys by Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley and Alfred Wallace. Darwin's Armada provides a broad overview that strikes a different tone to other books in a crowded market. Casual readers who usually steer clear of non-fiction will enjoy it. Full review...
A Journey Through Ruins: The Last Days of London by Patrick Wright
My good mood evaporated when Sue, my Bookbag partner, asked me if I'd read and review A Journey Through Ruins. She was right to ask because Thatcher's Britain is certainly an area of interest to me. The thing is, times are depressing enough. Margaret Hilda's neo-liberal legacy is crashing around us. Jobless queues are lengthening. Roofs are disappearing from over people's heads. The rampant cronyism and venal nature of our economic and political elites are slowly exposing themselves in ways likely to send my blood pressure soaring. Full review...
The Lost City of Z: A Legendary British Explorer's Deadly Quest to Uncover the Secrets of the Amazon by David Grann
For Lieutenant-Colonel Percy Fawcett there was more to the Amazonian jungle than El Dorado. His target was a treasure of a different nature – a lost city to be discovered because it was a city, not for any spurious material wealth it might hold. Could an entire civilisation have been founded in the inhospitable tracks of rain forest, and left remains he might find fame in locating? As this brilliant biography shows, Fawcett was the best man around to find it. Full review...
The Last Supper: A Summer in Italy by Rachel Cusk
So, there's this family, right, and the parents have itchy feet, so they pack everything up and say goodbye to the dog, and leave Clifton, Bristol, and drive down to Italy and live a fine and different life, and the plumbing might not be the best but the neighbours and the scrumping and the wine are all to die for and it all comes right in the end with life-affirming brilliance.
There will be many people shuddering at that completely false description of this book. Full review...
Architecture Uncooked: An Architect Looks Around New Zealand Holiday Houses by Pip Cheshire and Patrick Reynolds
This book immediately impresses by its clearly written, yet intelligent writing, and its photography that captures both the structure and the spirit of the holiday homes scattered around the New Zealand countryside. Full review...
Roam by Dean Starnes
Languages, customs, rituals, fascinating things to do, places to see, people to visit – all in the one book, covering almost every nook and cranny throughout the world. This is a travel book covering, well, pretty well everything. Full review...