Difference between revisions of "Newest Travel Reviews"
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| + | |author=John George Freeman and Ronnie Scott (editor) | ||
| + | |title=Three Men and a Bradshaw | ||
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| + | |summary=This book is quite the very time machine, and because of that some of its own history is needed in summary. A year or two ago, our presenter Shaun Sewell was buying some private documents from the descendants of John George Freeman, to complete a set of illustrated travel journals he'd met with when risking a punt on the first few at auction. He was intent on getting them published since finding them, and seemed to be the first person with that desire since they were first written in the 1870s. Back then they were well-written, educative and entertaining looks at the early days of the travel industry, when for example piers were novel(ty) ways for the rail companies to justify sending people to the ends of the country where previously there had been little for them to do. Here then is railwayana, travel and social history, all between two covers. So even if this doesn't find the perfectly huge audience of some books, it will certainly raise interest in many households. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847947441</amazonuk> | ||
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|author=Peter Owen Jones | |author=Peter Owen Jones | ||
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|summary=I know two books don't make a genre, but twice in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues of men who felt too much was going on in their lives and their surroundings, and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold and inhospitable places. One went to the shores of Lake Baikal, and shared his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighbours. Gavin Francis took himself south, to the edge of the Antarctic ice, to spend a year as a scientific doctor. He wasn't able to be completely as alone as some have been in the past – even if he hid himself away in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was through. Francis ends up with a baker's dozen of companions, in a place where – apart from the ice, sealing things up – only two lockable doors exist. You might think this was a large group of people for someone wanting to be alone, but the very tenuous and isolated feel of the place in the huge emptiness of the landscape is the main point of this book – that, and communing with emperor penguins… | |summary=I know two books don't make a genre, but twice in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues of men who felt too much was going on in their lives and their surroundings, and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold and inhospitable places. One went to the shores of Lake Baikal, and shared his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighbours. Gavin Francis took himself south, to the edge of the Antarctic ice, to spend a year as a scientific doctor. He wasn't able to be completely as alone as some have been in the past – even if he hid himself away in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was through. Francis ends up with a baker's dozen of companions, in a place where – apart from the ice, sealing things up – only two lockable doors exist. You might think this was a large group of people for someone wanting to be alone, but the very tenuous and isolated feel of the place in the huge emptiness of the landscape is the main point of this book – that, and communing with emperor penguins… | ||
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956596X</amazonuk> | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956596X</amazonuk> | ||
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Revision as of 11:23, 4 May 2015
Three Men and a Bradshaw by John George Freeman and Ronnie Scott (editor)
This book is quite the very time machine, and because of that some of its own history is needed in summary. A year or two ago, our presenter Shaun Sewell was buying some private documents from the descendants of John George Freeman, to complete a set of illustrated travel journals he'd met with when risking a punt on the first few at auction. He was intent on getting them published since finding them, and seemed to be the first person with that desire since they were first written in the 1870s. Back then they were well-written, educative and entertaining looks at the early days of the travel industry, when for example piers were novel(ty) ways for the rail companies to justify sending people to the ends of the country where previously there had been little for them to do. Here then is railwayana, travel and social history, all between two covers. So even if this doesn't find the perfectly huge audience of some books, it will certainly raise interest in many households. Full review...
Pathlands by Peter Owen Jones
I have lots of walking books. All of them have been bought with a half-baked intention of actually doing the walks described within them… which of course, I've only partially succeeded in. I do have some books which I have fully ticked-off, but most of them, especially most of the later ones have (at best) been inspiration enough to get the boots on, but rarely more than once or twice. So many unfinished plans. Full review...
Beauty and Chaos: Slices and Morsels of Tokyo Life by Michael Pronko
Adapting a Buddhist metaphor, Michael Pronko declares that 'writing about [Tokyo] is like catching fish with a hollow gourd.' In other words, it is an elusive and contradictory place that resists easy conclusions. Anyone who has seen the Bill Murray film Lost in Translation will retain the sense of a glittering, bewildering place that Westerners wander through in a daze. A long-term resident but still a perpetual outsider, Pronko is perfectly placed to notice the many odd and wonderful aspects of Tokyo life. Full review...
Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David Greene
It's no mistake that the cover of my edition of this book is a photo where the Trans-Siberian Railway is horizontal in the frame. It's well known for going east-west, left to right across the map of the largest country by far in the world. 9,288 kilometres from Moscow to the eastern stretches of Russia, it could only be a long, thin line across the cover, as it is in our imagination of it as a form of transport and a travel destination in its own right. So when this book mentions it as the spine or backbone of Russia a couple of times, that's got to be of a prone Russia – one lying down, not upright or active. David Greene, a stalwart of northern American radio journalism, uses this book to see just how active or otherwise Russia and Russians are – and finds their lying down to be quite a definite verdict, as well as a slight indictment. It's no mistake either for this cover to have people in the frame alongside the train carriages, for the people met both riding and living alongside the tracks of the Railway are definitely the ribs of the piece. Full review...
Down to the Sea in Ships by Horatio Clare
Inspired by a chance read of Moby Dick, the aptly named Horatio Clare applies to be a writer in residence for a shipping company. They accept, and he travels with them on two voyages - one from Felixstowe to Los Angeles, and the other from Antwerp to Montreal. Full review...
The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America by Mike McIntyre and Chris Brinkley (narrator)
In 1994 Mike McIntyre was a thirty-seven-year-old journalist with a secret: he was frightened. There were specific fears, but what it boiled down to was that he was frightened of life - and then there was a memory. He remembered - with some shame - not stopping for a hitchhiker with a gas can in the desert. It was almost on a whim that he decided to cross America, from San Francisco in California to Cape Fear in North Carolina, which might sound like a great adventure, but McIntyre decides to do it without money - to be completely reliant on the kindness of strangers. He was confronting his own fears. Full review...
A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh by Alexander McCall Smith
It might be simplest if I begin by telling you what this book is not. It's not a book of beautiful photographs (with some supporting text) of the places you'll almost certainly want to visit if you're visiting Edinburgh as a tourist. If that's what you want then there are dozens of such books available all over the city at a fraction of the cost of A Work of Beauty. This might have the look of a coffee table book (and it would certainly look impressive there) but it has a lot more depth and interest than you might expect. This is a book of Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh, the city he walks around every day, constantly seeing something new, something else with a story to tell. Full review...
Hummingbirds in My Hair: Adventures of a Diplomatic Wife in the Caribbean by Pamela O'Cuneen
Pamela O'Cuneen was what is known in the business as a 'diplomatic wife': the spouse of a diplomat sent abroad to represent his country. It's generally unpaid and extremely hard work - I've always thought of it as one of the original BOGOF deals. When we first meet Pamela she and her husband, KJ, have been transferred from their beloved Africa to Suriname, or Suri-where? as people always responded when it was mentioned to them. It used to be Dutch Guyana on the Caribbean coast of South America and there are few people who would think of it in terms of a holiday destination. Full review...
Engel's England: Thirty-nine counties, one capital and one man by Matthew Engel
Matthew Engel has spent some considerable time travelling around the thirty nine historic counties of England. On the face of it this is a rather strange task given that some of the counties (anyone remember Middlesex? Cumberland?) no longer exist and that they are - or were - situated in a country which you can't reliably find on a drop-down internet menu. Engel's attempts to explain to his eight-year-old son which country we live in produced mixed results. His son grasped the outlines but as he explained the concepts Engels found himself getting more and more confused, particularly when you add in the counties: reorganisation in 1974 changed borders, created new counties and abolished some old ones. Some were renamed, to subsequently revert to the old name whilst others faded away unremarked. Full review...
In the Country by David Gentleman
I had no intention of reading In The Country. I opened it simply to see what it was like, but by the time that I shut it again I was nearly halfway through and I had no intention of giving the book to anyone else. Now in his eighties David Gentleman is well known as watercolourist, specialising in landscapes. He's based in London but also has a home in Suffolk in the village of Huntingfield and it's this house, the village and the surrounding area which is the location for In The Country. Full review...
Four Fields by Tim Dee
If asked to name, or even think of, four fields, the common man might well struggle, such is the chance of him living in a city. He might not think of the local park as a field, and he may turn to the field of the cloth of gold if a historian, the field of dreams perhaps, or he might at least have something looking like a football pitch in his mind's eye. Tim Dee, not a nature scientist as such but so in tune with the outside world he really doesn't seem to have stopped indoors but to write this book in the past decade, seems like the sort of person who could hardly name four buildings, but would relish the chance to itemise his favourite fields. He is very doubtful any two in Britain are the same. Like snowflakes, then, they can bear a closer examination to show their full picture – and Dee picks on four, across the world and noted for events across the last few thousand years, to focus on. The result is a rich – if at times over-rich – summation of the birdlife above the fields, and everything Dee knows and loves about them. Full review...
Like a Tramp, Like A Pilgrim: On Foot, Across Europe to Rome by Harry Bucknall
What links London and Rome? Their capital city status for one, of course. One has a St Paul's cathedral, the other a St Peter's (although pedants will say not). They both have a football team who wear red and white. Oh, and the ancient pilgrim route called the Via Francigena – although the pedant will again say that that strictly starts at that other pilgrimage site, Canterbury. As for Harry Bucknall, the Via starts at St Paul's and should end at St Peter's. Whether or not Harry himself will connect the two cities – and entirely on foot – is the subject of this travel book. Full review...
One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest by Wade Davis
As someone who has always enjoyed learning about the Amazon, and with plans to travel to South America next year, this book practically screamed at me to be reviewed. And, although a little tough going and long-winded in parts, I'm glad I had the opportunity to get lost in Davis' incredible work of non-fiction. Difficult to describe in terms of genre, this book combines history, politics, science, botany and culture. It is delivered through a biographical account of Davis' own travels and as a memoir to Richard Evans Schultes, an ethnobotanist well known for his work and travels in the Amazon and Wade Davis' highly regarded mentor. Full review...
Last Days of the Bus Club by Chris Stewart
I could well have been a near-neighbour of Chris Stewart. Not, of course, near his current primary occupancy, an ecological farmstead just beyond the turning off from the back end of nowhere in the most rural of corners of southern Spain, but back when he lived in the south-east of England, being Genesis' first ever drummer, and building bridges in the North Downs. The fact I learnt the latter from this book shows up several of the features of this warm-hearted 'travelogue' – the fact that Stewart is never shy about portraying family details and history – given a good map and a prevailing wind one could find where he lives and descend on the farm, if one wished; and that while this might be on the travel shelves, the narrative is so fragmented it actually moves a lot more than any of the characters do. Full review...
Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World by Lynne Martin
Lynne and Tim Martin had known each other decades ago but when we meet them they've only been married for a short time. There's just one thing though - they're not ready to settle down, despite the fact that they're what might be called 'upper middle aged'. Their roots are in the US - both have adult children there and the Martins have a house in California - but they want to travel and not just as tourists. They want to see the world as the locals see it and to experience what it's like to live there. Lynne describes them as not being wealthy, but they decide to sell their home, invest the money and become 'home-free'. Full review...
101 Places in Italy : A Private Grand Tour by Francis Russell
Initially I struggled to describe this book. It's not a guide book: maps are intended only to give you a rough idea of where the towns, cities and villages are - even major rivers are not shown. There are no opening times of museums or other details which the visitor might need and whilst it's a tremendous help to the tourist there's a sense throughout the book of their being people who are best avoided if at all possible. November and February seem to be the best months for your visit in many cases. The 101 places you'll visit in the book are given no wider importance than the works of art within them. Finally I accepted that the subtitle of the book - A Private Grand Tour was the most appropriate. Full review...
Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the War by Michael Williams
Soon after the end of the First World War, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’ companies, the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways. By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport to lorries, buses and coaches. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part in the preparation to keep the country moving, keeping industry and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or as their press office put it in a pamphlet of 1943, 'tackling the biggest job in transport history'. Full review...
Never Mind the Bullocks: One girl's 10,000 km adventure around India in the worlds cheapest car by Vanessa Able
With a cute little map of India on the front cover and cartoon cars puttering over the page, I thought I’d chosen an entertaining yet mind-broadening travelogue. Well I was wrong. Now I’ve read it through, I don’t even see it on the same shelf as a Lonely Planet. But that’s possibly this book’s novelty and great strength. The travelogue shelf is fair groaning under weighty tomes by Europeans digging into Indian life and culture. So let me unpack the delights of this particular book for you, but don’t be misled: you aren’t going to pick up many recommendations for your own odyssey from this round-India skedaddle. Full review...
London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing by Travis Elborough
The concept of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art is not new. Yet one of the most unusual sales of this kind occurred in March 1968. It was a time of British economic crisis (where and when have we heard that before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaign, and a time when the concept of heritage was unfashionable and the authorities seemed to attach more value to modernity than to relics of the Regency and the Victorian age. Full review...
The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink by Olivia Laing
Coming from a family with an alcoholic background, Olivia Laing became fascinated by the idea of why and how some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature were written by those with a drink problem. The list soon became a long one – Dylan Thomas, Raymond Chandler, Jack London, Jean Rhys, to name but a few, instantly came to mind. In the spring of 2011 she crossed the Atlantic to take a trip across the USA, from New York City and New Orleans to Chicago and Seattle by hired car and train, in the course of which she took a close look at the link between creativity and alcohol which inspired the work of six authors, namely F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Taking her title from a character in Williams’s play ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ who says he is taking a trip to echo spring, an euphemism for the liquor cabinet, she travels to the places which were pivotal in their often overlapping lives and work. Full review...
Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins by Gavin Francis
I know two books don't make a genre, but twice in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues of men who felt too much was going on in their lives and their surroundings, and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold and inhospitable places. One went to the shores of Lake Baikal, and shared his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighbours. Gavin Francis took himself south, to the edge of the Antarctic ice, to spend a year as a scientific doctor. He wasn't able to be completely as alone as some have been in the past – even if he hid himself away in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was through. Francis ends up with a baker's dozen of companions, in a place where – apart from the ice, sealing things up – only two lockable doors exist. You might think this was a large group of people for someone wanting to be alone, but the very tenuous and isolated feel of the place in the huge emptiness of the landscape is the main point of this book – that, and communing with emperor penguins… Full review...
