Travel writing
Showing all 10 results
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A Theatre For Dreamers
£8.99A Theatre For Dreamers
1960. The world is dancing on the edge of revolution, and nowhere more so than on the Greek island of Hydra, where a circle of poets, painters and musicians live tangled lives, ruled by the writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston, troubled king and queen of bohemia. Forming within this circle is a triangle: its points the magnetic, destructive writer Axel Jensen, his dazzling wife Marianne Ihlen, and a young Canadian poet named Leonard Cohen. Into their midst arrives teenage Erica, with little more than a bundle of blank notebooks and her grief for her mother. Settling on the periphery of this circle, she watches, entranced and disquieted, as a paradise unravels.
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Beyond Possible
£20.00Beyond Possible
My comfort zone begins where most individuals quit. As a kid in Nepal, I went barefoot because my family had nothing. That’s how I developed the resilience I needed for joining the Gurkhas – one of the most fearless forces in the British Army. Then against all odds, I became the first ever Gurkha soldier in more than 200 years of history to join the Special Boat Service where I served in the some of the world’s most dangerous warzones, kicking down doors to capture enemy gunmen and terrorist bomb makers. But elite combat wasn’t enough. I wanted more of a test. That’s where my next project came in, something nobody thought possible – to climb all 14 ‘Death Zone’ mountains in seven months. This is the inside story of my incredible adventure.
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Cruickshank’s London
£30.00Cruickshank’s London
Cobbled medieval alleyways and ornate Georgian boulevards. Decadent marble mansions and sprawling Victorian slums. Heaths, churches, squares and railways that, between them, hold 2,000 years of secrets: London’s history is written into the very fabric of its streets. In ‘Cruickshank’s London’, one of Britain’s best-loved historians vividly describes 13 historic walks that span North, East, South and West London.
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I Am An Island
£9.99I Am An Island
When Tamsin Calidas first arrives on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides, it feels like coming home. Disenchanted by London, she and her husband left the city and high-flying careers to move the 500 miles north, despite having absolutely no experience of crofting, or of island life. It was idyllic, for a while. But as the months wear on, the children she’d longed for fail to materialise, and her marriage breaks down, Tamsin finds herself in ever-increasing isolation. Injured, ill, without money or friend she is pared right back, stripped to becoming simply a raw element of the often harsh landscape. But with that immersion in her surroundings comes the possibility of rebirth and renewal. Tamsin begins the slow journey back from the brink.
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The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman
£10.99The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman
Cycling is wildly popular all over Belgium, but in the northern, Dutch-speaking half of the country it is part of the psyche. Flanders is the size of East Anglia with population a tenth of that of Great Britain, yet this small corner of north-west Europe has produced eight winners of the Tour de France, five times as many professional riders as Italy or Spain. Blending reportage, interviews, observation, biography and history and written with affectionate humour by a committed Belgophile, ‘The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman’ tells the story of Flanders’ neurotic love affair with bike racing, from tough early heroes such as Jules Vanhevel – wounded by mortar fire in the First World War and leading the world championship road race until he collided with a cow – to latter-day ironmen such as Tom Boonen, three-times winner of the Tour of Flanders and owner of a pet donkey named Kamiel.
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The Colour of Sky After Rain
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The Lost Pianos of Siberia
£10.99The Lost Pianos of Siberia
Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos – grand instruments created during the boom years of the 19th century, and humble, Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos travelled into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers and exiles. That stately instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. But this is Siberia, where people can endure the worst of the world.
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The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien
£25.00The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien
An expertly written investigation of the places that shaped the work of one of the world’s best loved authors, exploring the relationship between worlds real and fantastical.
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Three Tigers, One Mountain
£9.99Three Tigers, One Mountain
The Chinese, Koreans and Japanese are more than neighbours, they are siblings from a Confucian family. They share so much culturally, from this ancient philosophy with its hierarchical, bureaucratic legacy, to rice-growing, art, architecture, chopsticks, noodles and much more which has been passed down from China over millennia. In turn, China has modelled much of its recent industrial and economic strategy on Japan’s post-war manufacturing miracle, and adores contemporary Korean popular culture. Yet still East Asia festers with a mutual animosity which frequently threatens to draw the world into a 21st-century war. In this book, which blends popular anthropology, history, politics and travel, the subjects are these Asian tigers which have endured occupation, war and devastation to become among the richest, most developed and powerful societies on earth.
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Walking the Great North Line
£20.00Walking the Great North Line
Lay out a map of Britain and something odd becomes apparent: at 1 degree 50 minutes west there is a dead straight line going true north from Stonehenge to Lindisfarne. Two of Britain’s most-ancient and most-revered sites. But there is more. Starting in the south, the line goes dead north from Castle Ditches to old Sarum, through Stonehenge, Knap Hill, and Avebury stone circles, past ancient places in Cricklade, Bibury, Notgrove, and Wootton Wawen. It goes through Long Low, Thor’s Cave, Mam Tor, nearby Twelve Apostles stone circle, Ilkley Roman site, The Badger stone, ancient sites in Lanchester, Eochester, Millstone Burn, Bewick Hill and all the way to finish plum on Lindisfarne Island – one of the most ancient of early Christian sites and still a retreat and monastery. Robert Twigger has travelled this ancient line on foot, like a biologist walking a transect.
£20.00