Newest Travel Reviews
Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart by Diccon Bewes
After several years in my position in relation to the book industry (on the periphery but left a bit – and round the bend a lot) I am never surprised at what has a market. Every niche has either been filled, or is getting there. So when I found in looking into this book that the author has written several before now, all extolling the virtues of Switzerland, I was not surprised. I was only regretting he hadn't chosen a cheaper country for us to likewise fall in love with. Still, all power to the author's elbow, as regardless of any other journalism he has produced from exploring the country, here he writes about one lengthy trip around the more popular parts with fresh and new-seeing eyes, helped by those who really were seeing it for the first time, a century and a half ago. Full review...
Sea Monsters: The Lore and Legacy of Olaus Magnus's Marine Map by Joseph Nigg
A confession. When reading hardbacks I take the paper cover, if there is one, off, to keep it pristine. Sometimes there's a second benefit, with Longbourn by Jo Baker as an example of having an embossed illustration underneath, or suchlike. But with this book I won't be alone, for the cover folds out into an amazing artwork, such as has only two extant original copies. It's a coloured replica of a large map of the northern seas and Scandinavia, dating from 1539, and is in a category of three major artful scientific papers from where the whole 'here be dragons' cliché about maps comes from. Its creator, Olaus Magnus, followed it up years later with a commentary of all the sea creatures he drew on it, but Magnus has waited centuries for this delicious volume to commentate on both together, in such a lovely fashion. Full review...
An Armenian Sketchbook by Vasily Grossman
In 1961, noted Soviet man of letters Vasily Grossman went to Armenia, for a couple of months' research and fact-finding, while he was working on transforming an Armenian novel of no small length into Russian. (You can't call it translating, as he didn't speak Armenian beyond two words – he really was paid to rewrite it to some extent in his fashion.) With time spent in the capital, Yerevan, and in other rural areas, he got an intimate flavour of the country and its people, and this book is the resulting piece. It's not really accurate to call it a travelogue, for it covers just a patch here, a topic there, and is in no correct order as such – and the author calls it a literary memoir. What you can call it, however, is a success. Full review...
You Are Awful (But I Like You): Travels Through Unloved Britain by Tim Moore
This is not the first book I've read about the scummy, unloved corners of our country, and I approached it in just the same way I did with the last - I looked to see if it might feature Leicester, where I live. The opinion seems to be that you can only like Leicester enough to be proud of it if you're not from there originally - and as I grew up on the edge of a village in the middle of nowhere, it suits me fine. But no - despite its problems (thanks, Labour councils) it doesn't count. It's not grotty, ugly, run-down and unappreciated enough. It still has some semblance of life, unlike too many towns and cities in Britain where the industry, the jobs, the life and the thought have been sucked out, seemingly beyond repair. After stumbling upon the nightmare that is the out-of-season, redundant English coastal town, our author has valiantly journeyed round many of these grot-spots, and found the story of decrepitude only exacerbating. Full review...
How To Be Danish: From Lego to Lund. A Short Introduction to the State of Denmark by Patrick Kingsley
First, the bad news. This slim volume won't actually tell you how to become a Danish person, despite the title. What it will do, though, is give you a new appreciation for the people of Denmark, and quite possibly make you want to jump on the first plane to Copenhagen to savour what is, according to the United Nations, the happiest country in the world. Full review...
Roads to Berlin by Cees Nooteboom and Laura Watkinson (Translator)
'Whoever controls Berlin controls Germany and whoever controls Germany controls Europe' is a remark which is attributed to Lenin. Until November 1989, the Berlin Wall bisected the historic city and divided its citizens from each other. Berlin was occupied, militarised and yet its people carried on with their daily lives amongst the ruins. Cees Nooteboom, a distinguished Dutch travel writer, knew something of the devastation of the past. He is old enough to have experienced, and at impressionable age, the Nazi Blitzkreig and occupation of Holland. A sensitive and susceptible person, he meditates upon the various strata of meaning, history, heroism and time itself. The result is a prose poem on a unique city that is condemned to be constantly developing, becoming rather than just being. Full review...
On The Map by Simon Garfield
You might think that there's not a lot which could be said about maps - but you'd be completely wrong. This is staggeringly good - one of the very best non-fiction books I've read all year. Garfield takes us from the Great Library of Alexandria to a map of the brain, via maps in films, treasure maps and JM Barrie's hatred of folding maps. Alternating between full chapters which tell the stories of cartographers and their maps in roughly chronological order, and shorter entries bearing the title 'Pocket Map' which pick out particularly interesting trivia, there's not a dull entry in the book. Full review...
Walking Home by Simon Armitage
Poet Simon Armitage decided in 2010 to walk the Pennine Way 'in reverse' - instead of heading to Scotland, he'd start just across the border and walk in the direction of his native Yorkshire. As if doing it this way, with the sun, wind and rain in his face wasn't hard enough, he also challenged himself to do it without a penny to his name, earning cash for the journey by giving poetry readings in pubs, village halls and living rooms. Could he make a 256-mile journey supported only by the kindness of strangers and his own willpower? Full review...
Touching The World: A Blind Woman, Two Wheels and 25,000 Miles by Cathy Birchall and Bernard Smith
Consider the world. There might not be enough of it to go around in some over-crowded places, but there is enough variety in it - and us - for us all to have our own version of it; our own perceptions, experiences and expectations. Those are drastically altered from those of you and I if one is blind, as Cathy Birchall is. But that simple fact did not stop her taking a year out, and starting in August 2008, perch herself on her husband's pillion seat and be taken from one end of the earth to the other and back again. Full review...
Up In The Old Hotel by Joseph Mitchell
One of the joys of reviewing books is when you stumble across something, know you are going to love it, ask for it, have it delivered and then spend a week or so being absolutely entranced. It could so easily have been a disappointment.
Joseph Mitchell is one of those men, one feels one should have heard of, should know about. Not just that, he is one of those, one wishes one could have known. Full review...
On The Road to Babadag by Andrzej Stasiuk
Sometimes we should trust our instincts. When I saw Babadag on the Shelf I knew I would love it. When I sat in my garden on a hot sunny evening and struggled my way through the first chapter, I had my doubts.
Oh, ye of little faith...! Full review...
