Category Archives: Travel Guides
Walking Home, Travels with a Troubadour on the Pennine Way
In summer 2010 Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way. The challenging 256-mile route is usually approached from south to north, from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm, the other side of the Scottish border. He resolved to tackle it the other way round: through beautiful and bleak terrain, across lonely fells
Manhattan `45
Winner of the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingIn 1945, New York City stood at the pinnacle of its cultural and economic power. Never again would the city possess the unique mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality, generosity and confidence which characterized it in this moment of triumph.
Sydney
Winner of the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingRenowned and much-loved travel writer Jan Morris turns her eye to Sydney: `not the best of the cities the British Empire created… but the most hyperbolic, the youngest at heart, the shinest`.
Venetian Navigators: The Voyages of the Zen Borthers to the Far North
In the 1380s and 90s, Nicolo and Antonio Zen journeyed from Venice up the North Atlantic, encountering warrior princes, fighting savage natives and, just possibly, reaching the New World a full century before Columbus. This title tells the story of their adventure travelled throughout Europe, from the workshop of the great cartographer Mercator to the
The Wasted Vigil
A Russian woman named Lara arrives in Afghanistan at the house of Marcus Caldwell, an Englishman and widower living in the shadow of the Tora Bora mountains. Marcus` daughter, Zameen, may have known Lara`s brother, a Soviet soldier who disappeared in the area many years previously. But like Marcus` wife, Zameen is dead; a victim
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Things have never been easy for Oscar. A ghetto nerd living with his Dominican family in New Jersey, he`s sweet but disastrously overweight. He dreams of becoming the next J.R.R. Tolkien and he keeps falling hopelessly in love. Poor Oscar may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku – the curse that has
When a Billion Chinese Jump
With foul air, filthy water, rising temperatures and encroaching deserts, China is already suffering an environmental disaster. Now it faces a stark choice: either accept catastrophe, or make radical changes. Traveling the vast country to witness this environmental challenge, Jonathan Watts moves from mountain paradises to industrial wastelands, examining the responses of those at the
An Evil Eye
When the body of a Russian agent is found down a monastery well, Yashim knows exactly who to blame. Fevzi Ahmet Pasha, commander of the Ottoman fleet. Years ago, when Yashim first entered the sultan`s service, Fevzi Ahmet was his mentor. Ruthless, cruel, and – in Yashim`s eyes – ultimately ineffective, he is the only
The Bellini Card
Charged by the Sultan to find a stolen painting by Bellini, Yashim the detective enlists the help of his friend Palewski, the Polish Ambassador, and goes undercover. Venice in 1840 is a city of empty palazzos and silent canals, and Palewski starts to mingle with Venetian dealers – but when two bodies turn up in
Keeping Up with the Germans
In 1996, in the middle of watching an ill-tempered football match between England and Germany, Philip Oltermann`s parents tell him that they are going to leave their home city Hamburg behind and move to London. A number of worrying questions arise. How would English schoolboys take to a lanky 16-year-old German? How did they think
The Snake Stone
It is Istanbul, 1838, and Lefevre, a French archaeologist, has arrived in Istanbul determined to uncover a lost Byzantine treasure. Yashim is hired to investigate him, but when the man turns up dead, there is only one suspect: Yashim himself. Once again, the investigator finds himself in a race against time to uncover the startling
Travels with a Typewriter
`All writers of fiction should be required by law to go out and do a bit of reporting from time to time, just to remind them how different the real world in front of their eyes is from the invented world behind them`. This is what Frayn did in mid-career, when he took up his
The Street Sweeper
On the crowded streets of New York City there are even more stories than there are people passing each other every day …only some of these stories survive to become history. Lamont Williams, recently released from prison and working as a hospital janitor, strikes up an unlikely friendship with a patient, an elderly Jewish Holocaust
The Story of a Marriage
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of `Less`.”A riveting and fascinating novel full of stunning observations and brilliant moments of truth and sympathy.” Colm ToibinIt is 1953, and in San Francisco Pearlie, a dutiful housewife, finds herself caring for both her husband`s fragile health and her polio-afflicted son. Then one morning someone from her husband`s past
The Museum of Innocence
The Museum of Innocence – set in Istanbul between 1975 and today – tells the story of Kemal, the son of one of Istanbul`s richest families, and of his obsessive love for a poor and distant relation, the beautiful Fusun, who is a shop-girl in a small boutique. The novel depicts a panoramic view of
Bicycle Diaries
David Byrne’s Bicycle Diaries is a selection of writings on topics that have occurred to the cyclist as he has pedalled his way around urban landscapes over the last thirty years. Taking a folding bike on music tours around the world, Byrne’s bike seat has given him a panoramic window on urban life in cities
She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth
In medieval England, man was the ruler of woman, and the King was the ruler of all. How, then, could royal power lie in female hands? In She-Wolves, celebrated historian, Helen Castor, tells the dramatic and fascinating stories of four exceptional women who, while never reigning queens, held great power: Matilda, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella
The Other Paris
Paris, the City of Light, the city of fine dining, seductive couture and intellectual hauteur, was until fairly recently always accompanied by its shadow: the city of the poor, the outcast, the criminal, the eccentric, the willfully nonconforming. In The Other Paris, Luc Sante gives us a panoramic view of that second metropolis, whose traces
White Death
Castagnetti, a bee-keeping private detective, is hired by a businessman to find out who set fire to his car and why. It seems like a dead-end case, nothing more than an instance of mindless vandalism. But before long the businessman is receiving threatening phonecalls, his factory is burnt to the ground and an employee loses
When God made Hell
Since 2003, Iraq has rarely left the headlines. But less discussed is the fact that Iraq as we know it was created by the British, in one of the most dramatic interventions in recent history. A cautious strategic invasion by British forces led – within seven years – to imperial expansion on a dizzying scale,
