Category Archives: Travel Guides
India`s Unending Journey
Sir Mark Tully, born in India and educated in Britain, is a citizen of two countries – indeed, two continents – and two cultures. In “India`s Undending Journey” he shares his formative experiences of his upbringing, his first calling to become a priest, his distinguished broadcasting career and his fascination for India’s traditions as well
Last Night I Dramed of Peace
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the moving diary kept by a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed by the Americans during the Vietnam War, while trying to defend her patients. Not only is it an important slice of history, from the opposite side of Dispatches and Apocalypse Now, but it shows the diarist
An Imperfect Offering
Born in Britain in 1960, James Orbinski`s family moved to Canada when he was seven years old. As a young man, he became a medic to learn how to help, and deal with, the suffering of others. From then on he was plunged into many highly demanding situations, including being Head of Mission for Medecins
Letters from an Extreme Pilgrim
On a journey that would take him deep into the wilderness, award-winning television presenter, author and parish priest Peter Owen Jones sets out in the footsteps of St Anthony, the founder of monasticism. In a hermit`s cell in the heart of the Egyptian Sinai Desert, he lived alone, spending his days in contemplation and prayer,
Helen Of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore
As soon as men began to write, they made Helen of Troy their subject; for close on three thousand years she has been both the embodiment of absolute female beauty and a reminder of the terrible power that beauty can wield. Because of her double marriage to the Greek King Menelaus and the Trojan Prince
Raising My Voice
Malalai Joya is the youngest and most famous female MP in Afghanistan, whose bravery and vision have won her an international following. She made world headlines with her very first speech, in which she courageously denounced the presence of warlords in the new Afghan government. She has spoken out for justice ever since, and for
Two Wheels On My Wagon
As bicycle races go, the attractions of the Tour Divide are not immediately apparent. For a start, it is the longest mountain-bike race in the world, running nearly 3,000 miles down the Rockies from Canada to Mexico. But the distance is not the only challenge – the total ascent of 200,000 ft is the equivalent
In The Valley Of The Mist
Mohammed Dar and his three brothers were born in a boat on a lake in Kashmir, a place of exquisite beauty that was to become a war zone and nuclear flashpoint. This Himalayan valley of water, mist and mountains was once one of India`s greatest tourist draws. In 1989, it exploded into insurgency. Kashmir became
The House By The Dvina
The House by the Dvina is the riveting story of two families separated in culture and geography but bound together by a Russian-Scottish marriage. It includes episodes as romantic and dramatic as any in fiction: the purchase by the author`s great-grandfather of a peasant girl with whom he had fallen in love; the desperate sledge
India – The Road Ahead
Since the Indian economy was liberated from bureaucratic, socialist controls in 1991, it has developed rapidly. A country once renowned for the backwardness of its industries, its commerce and its financial market is now viewed as potentially one of the major world economies of the twenty-first century. But there are many questions which need to
100 Classic Coastal Walks in Scotland
Scotland and its islands encompass more than 10,000 miles of breathtaking coastline. The 100 routes outlined by Andrew Dempster take in the quaint fishing ports, long sun-bleached strands and vast golf links of the east coast; the grand Gothic cliffs, natural arches and storm-tossed seastacks that comprise much of the fractured edge of the Atlantic;
In Spite of Oceans: Migrant Voices
In Spite of Oceans: Migrant Voices explores the individual journeys of generations in transition from the South Asian subcontinent to England. Poignantly written, and based on real events and interviews, what emerges is the story of lives between cultures, of families reconciling customs and traditions away from their ancestral roots, and of the tensions this
The Empire Stops Here
The Roman Empire was the largest and most enduring of the ancient world. From its zenith under Augustus and Trajan in the first century AD to its decline and fall amidst the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, the Empire guarded and maintained a frontier that stretched for 5,000 kilometres, from Carlisle to Cologne, from
Britannia`s Daughters
In Britannia`s Daughters, bestselling novelist Joanna Trollope examines the contribution of women in building and sustaining the British Empire. She draws on a vast range of sources, including diaries and letters home. She provides a panoramic picture of the countless women who departed Britain for India, Australia, the Far East, Canada and Africa – often
Memories of Che Guevara
On 14 June 1928, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna was born in Rosario, Argentina. A charismatic boy who loved jokes and shunned bathing, the first signs of Che`s radical perspective began to show long beofre his famous motorcycle journey around South America in 1953. Assembled from two separate books- My Son Che and A Soldier
Footprints in Paris
Footprints in Paris is a unique and intensely involving book evokes the texture and atmosphere of a hidden Paris which has survived against all the odds of time and chance. Gillian Tindall is well known for her ability to breathe a passionate life into the generations of those who have walked this earth before us.
The Time Traveller`s Guide To Medieval England
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there…Imagine you could travel back to the fourteenth century. What would you see, and hear, and smell? Where would you stay? What are you going to eat? And how are you going to test to see if you are going down with the plague? In
The Lotus Quest
The lotus is the world`s most iconic flower. Galvanised by receiving seeds from a three-thousand-year-old lotus, which flowered without difficulty in an English summer, Mark Griffiths set out to track the path of this sublime plant to its home in the Lotus-Lands of Japan. The Lotus Quest unveils a stunning vision of Japan`s feudal era,
That Sweet Enemy
From Blenheim and Waterloo to `Up Yours, Delors` and `Hop Off You Frogs`, the cross-Channel relationship has been one of rivalry, misapprehension and suspicion. But it has also been a relationship of envy, admiration and affection. In the nearly two centuries since the final defeat of Napoleon, France and Britain have spent much of that
Sweet Water & Bitter
Sweet Water and Bitter is the extraordinary sequel to Britain`s abolition of the slave trade in 1807. The last legal British slave ship left Africa that year, but other countries and illegal slavers continued to trade. When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, British diplomats negotiated anti-slave-trade treaties and a `Preventive Squadron` was formed to
