Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Janissary Tree
A concubine is strangled in the Sultan`s palace harem, and a young cadet is found butchered in the streets of Istanbul. Delving deep into the city`s crooked alleyways, and deeper still into its tumultuous past, the eunuch Yashim discovers that some people will go to any lengths to preserve the traditions of the Ottoman Empire.
The White War: Life And Death On The Italian Front 1915-1919
The Western Front dominates our memories of the First World War. Yet a million and half men died in North East Italy in a war that need never have happened, when Italy declared war on the Habsburg Empire in May 1915. Led by General Luigi Cadorna, the most ruthless of all the Great War commanders,
Utopian Dreams
“Utopian Dreams” offers one writer`s attempt to retreat from the `real world` – which is making him emptier and angrier by the day – and seek out the alternatives to modern manners and morality. Instead of cynicism, loneliness and depression, is it possible to be idealistic, to find belonging and companionship with others who share
Caesar`s Vast Ghost: Aspects of Provence
Provence, where Lawrence Durrell lived for thirty years, is the motif of this final work, published just before his death. It is a highly personal and unusual book, part travelogue, part writer`s notebook, part autobiography. It preserves memories from his intimate experience of the Midi, and scattered through the evocative text are nineteen poems inspired
Wrong About Japan
In a stunning memoir-cum-travelogue Peter Carey charts this journey and his own re-evaluation of Japan through his attempt to understand its culture of animated film and cartoon. With an appeal that spans the generations, these cartoons are violent and disturbing but also inherently concerned with Japan`s rich history and heritage. Led by their adolescent guide
Vernon God Little
Fifteen-year-old Vernon Gregory Little is in trouble, and it has something to do with the recent massacre of 16 students at his high school. Soon, the quirky backwater of Martirio, barbecue capital of Texas, is flooded with wannabe CNN hacks, eager for a scapegoat.
Arguments with England
`This beautifully written book by the director Michael Blakemore puts most such volumes to shame. It is full of both sharp insights and sudden shafts of wisdom. Often wonderfully funny, it is also touching and painfully honest. By the time you have finished Arguments with England, the author feels like an unusually wise and sympathetic
A Writer`s World
Winner of the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingCelebrating fifty years of travel writing and reportage, this book gathers together a hugely evocative collection of Morris`s own work. The articles and extracts contained within this anthology offer a unique insight into such seminal moments as the first successful ascent of
Pinochet in Piccadilly
In October 1998, General Augusto Pinochet, former dictator of Chile, was arrested in London. He had been charged with crimes against humanity by a Spanish magistrate, but over the 16 months that Pinochet was detained, equally intriguing questions went unanswered about his links with Britain. Why was Margaret Thatcher so keen to defend the General?
My Life as a Fake
In Melbourne in the late 1940s, a young conservative poet named Christopher Chubb decides to teach his country a lesson about pretension and authenticity. But over the ensuing years, his audacious act of literary ventriloquism takes on a much darker resonance.
The River Of Lost Footsteps – A Personal History of Burma
The River of Lost Footsteps is a fascinating look into Burma. For nearly two decades Western governments and a growing activist community have been frustrated in their attempts to bring about a freer and more democratic Burma – through sanctions and tourist boycotts – only to see an apparent slide towards even harsher dictatorship. But
Istanbul: Memories of a City
Orhan Pamuk’s extraordinarily beautiful ‘Istanbul” won the 2006 Nobel Prize for literature- once you have picked up and read this brilliant work, you will be in no doubt as to why it did.Arguably Turkey`s greatest living novelist, here he guides us through the monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways of
Coronation Everest
Winner of the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award`s Outstanding Contribution to Travel WritingCoronation Everest by Jan Morris is the passionate account of The Times’ young reporter attached to the successful 1953 expedition to Mount Everest, and her efforts to deliver the news to England the day before the Coronation of Queen Elisabeth II. Having
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of `Less`.”Here is a writer of great daring and originality… Max Tivoli may even make you cry.” Peter CareyMax Tivoli is writing the story of his life. He is nearly seventy years old, but he looks as if he is only seven – for Max is ageing backwards. The tragedy
Stanley – The Impossible Life of Africa`s Greatest Explorer
Henry Morton Stanley is arguably Britain’s greatest land explorer of all time. His character though, is held in an entirely different regard – today he is remembered as a cruel imperialist in Africa, and as an American journalist who said: ‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?”.In this compelling biography, Tim Jeal reveals the truth about Stanley and
The Ern Malley Affair
In October 1943, the young and successful Australian literary editor, Max Harris, received a package of poems by a recently deceased poet, Ern Malley, forwarded to him by his sister Ethel. Convinced he had hit upon the work of a Modernist genius, a poet of whom Australia could be proud, Harris published Malley`s poems in
Nagaland: A Journey to India`s Forgotten Frontier
Landlocked, almost inaccessible to foreigners, Nagaland has been fighting a secret, often brutal war for independence for more than half a century. Portrayed either as a land of ruthless guerrillas or exotic natives, Nagaland is in fact a complex and divided region, with an incredible history. The breathtaking Naga hills take us to the offices
The Dust Diaries
Fascinated by the tales of his great, great uncle who left England in 1901 to set up a mission in Southern Rhodesia, Sheers follows in the footsteps of the maverick Anglican missionary and travels to contemporary Zimbabwe. What emerges is an intriguing mix of biography, memoir and travelogue.The scope of the book is vast, comprising
The Schoolmaster
“Earl Lovelace`s second novel is modest in intent and succeeds through a kind of iron self discipline and restraint in building up a highly compact and convincing diagram of the impingements of a modern life ยฟon a remote modern village in the interior of Trinidad which wants a school and a school master ยฟ lovelace
Long Time No See
Long Time, No See introduces us to the unforgettable world of Mister Psyche. In the isolated coastal townland of Ballintra in the Northwest of Ireland Recent school-leaver, occasional worker, full-time companion and Malibu-provider to Uncle Joe-Joe and his friend, The Blackbird, Psyche is a boy on the cusp of adulthood, undone by a recent traumatic
