Category Archives: Travel Guides
Quest for Kim
This book is for all those who love Kim, that masterpiece of Indian life in which Kipling immortalized the Great Game. Fascinated since childhood by this strange tale of an orphan boy`s recruitment into the Indian secret service, Peter Hopkirk here retraces Kim`s footsteps across Kipling`s India to see how much of it remains. To
Eight Feet in the Andes
The eight feet belong to Dervla Murphy, her nine-year-old daughter Rachel, and Juana, an elegant mule, who together clambered the length of Peru, from Cajamarca near the border with Ecuador, to Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, over 1300 miles to the south. With only the most basic necessities to sustain them and spending most of
Time To Keep Silence
From the French Abbey of St Wandrille to the abandoned and awesome Rock Monasteries of Cappadocia in Turkey, the celebrated travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor studies the rigorous contemplative lives of the monks and the timeless beauty of their monastic surroundings. In his occasional retreats, the peaceful solitude and the calm enchantment of the monasteries
Running for the Hills
When Jenny and Robert fall in love in the late 1960s they decide to build a new future together, away from the city. They escape to an isolated sheep farm nestled on a mountainside. It has no running water but it is beautiful and rugged. Their young sons can roam wild. As their flock struggles,
The Violins of Saint-Jacques – A Tale of the Antilles
`There`s the scarlet thread of murder running through the colourless skein of life, and our duty is to unravel it, and isolate it, and expose every inch of it`. Arriving in the wilderness of London and in need of lodgings, Dr John Watson finds himself living at 221b Baker Street with one Sherlock Holmes. When
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, and above all he is widely acclaimed as the greatest travel writer of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water; he was a self-educated polymath,
Empires Of The Indus – The Story Of A River
Empires of the Indus follows the historical ebb and flow of the Indus, one of the largest rivers in the world. Rising in the Tibetan mountains, sweeping west across northern India and south through Pakistan, the river has been worshipped as a god for millennia and for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion.
Salaam Brick Lane
After ten years living abroad, Tarquin Hall wanted to return to his native London. Lured by his nostalgia for a leafy suburban childhood spent in south-west London, he returned with his Indian-born, American fiance in tow. But, priced out of the housing market, they found themselves living not in a townhouse, oozing Victorian charm, but
Metrostop Paris
The name of every Parisian metro station tells a story. In Metrostop Paris Gregor Dallas recounts a series of extraordinary but true tales about the city as he leads his readers around the metro. Both the armchair traveller and the visitor wil enjoy an illuminating journey in the company of a compelling storyteller and veteran
Words of Mercury
This is a gathering of Patrick Leigh Fermorยฟs most evocative writings, culled from his books, journalism and letters, many of which are published here in paperback book form for the first time.Contained within is a collection of extraordinary anecdotes that are full of atmosphere and incident, revealing Leigh Fermor to be a congenial, cultured traveller
Osman`s Dream
The Ottoman chronicles recount that the first sultan, Osman, dreamt of the dynasty he would found – a tree, fully-formed, emerged from his navel, symbolising the vigour of his successors and the extent of their domains. This is the first book to tell the full story of the Ottoman dynasty that for six centuries held
The Gaol – The Story of Newgate Prison
For over 800 years Newgate was the grimy axle around which British society slowly twisted. This is where such legendary outlaws as Robin Hood and Captain Kidd met their fates, where the rapier-wielding playwrights Ben Jonson and Christopher Marlowe sharpened their quills, and where flamboyant highwaymen like Claude Duval and James Maclaine made legions of
Penguins Stopped Play: Eleven Cricketers Take on the World
It seemed a simple enough idea at the outset: to assemble a team of eleven men to play cricket on each of the seven continents of the globe.Except that was not a simple idea at all. And when you throw in incompetent airline officials, amorous Argentine Colonels` wives, cunning Bajan drug dealers, gay Australian waiters,
Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China and the West
Peter Hessler`s previous book River Town was a prize-winning, poignant and deeply compelling portrait of China. Now, in Oracle Bones, Hessler returns to the country, excavating its long history and immersing himself in the lives of young Chinese as they migrate from the traditional Chinese countryside to the booming ever-changing cities and try to cope
Emma`s Luck
Emma lives alone in a big farmhouse with her animals for company: she talks to her chickens, cuddles up to her pigs in the sty and caresses her cows. But she also must make a living from her livestock, selling meat and making sausages. For Emma, it`s all part of a natural process, and she
In Search Of The English Eccentric
The English eccentric is under threat. In our increasingly homogenised society, these celebrated parts of our national identity are anomalies that may soon no longer fit. Or so it seems. On his entertaining and thought-provoking quest to discover the most eccentric English person alive today, Henry Hemming unearths a surprisingly large array of delightfully odd
The English Civil War at First Hand
Almost a quarter of a million lives were lost as King and Parliament battled for their religious and political ideals in the English Civil War. England was divided between Cavaliers and Roundheads engaged in bitter struggles from Preston to Lostwithiel, Pembroke to York. Armies were on the march, villages were decimated and great dynasties destroyed:
The Book of Fame
In August 1905 a party of young men set sail for England. Amongst them were ordinary farmers and bootmakers, a miner and a bank clerk. Together they made up the All Blacks, an unknown rugby team from Auckland, New Zealand. And they had come to show the world what they could do. What they didn`t
The London Compendium
The streets of London resonate with secret stories, from East End lore to Cold War espionage, from tales of riots, rakes, anarchy and grisly murders, to Rolling Stones gigs, gangland drinking dens, Orwell`s Fitzrovia and Lenin`s haunts. Ed Glinert has walked the length and breadth of the city to unravel its mysteries, travelling through time
Here at the end of the world we learn to dance
In a cave set back from the ocean, on the coast of New Zealand, Louise and Schmidt hide along with two local boys frightened of being called up to fight in the Great War. But the sensual rhythm of the tango lessons which Schmidt teaches on that sandy cave floor will have devastating consequences for
