Showing titles in Travel Writing & Commentary

Bloomsbury presents Fearless written and read by Louise Minchin. WINNER OF THE PEOPLE'S BOOK PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024 SELECTED FOR THE BBC AND READING AGENCY'S BIG SPORTING READ 2024 SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPORTS BOOK AWARDS 2024 – WOMEN'S SPORT WRITING AWARD A WATERSTONES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR...

Paris has long been a storied center of art and culture, and of romance, but in the 1920s its magnetism was especially irresistible. From around the world writers, artists, and composers steamed in, to visit or linger, some to reside. This book - a work of immense erudition spiced with anecdotes and gossip - documents their haunts and habits, their comings and goings, their relationships intimate and artistic.

The Travelling Ape is an award-winning book that explores what travelling the world taught him about life, humanity, and the geopolitical turmoil that so defines us. And how exploring the world changed him as a person, too. A journey infused with sharp insights and equally entertaining anecdotes of personal humiliation from when travel goes wrong.

From Amsterdam to Cambodia, from Rome to Indonesia, from New Orleans to Libya, and from Detroit to Ko Pha-Ngan, Geoff Dyer finds himself both floundering about in a sea of grievances and finding moments of transcendental calm. This aberrant quest for peak experiences leads, ultimately, to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where, to quote Tarkovsky's Stalker, 'your most cherished desire will come true'.

A "close-up look at the cloistered country" (USA Today), See You Again in Pyongyang is American writer Travis Jeppesen's "probing" and "artful" (New York Times Book Review) chronicle of his travels in North Korea--an eye-opening portrait that goes behind the headlines about Trump and Kim...

As Ellie’s 50th birthday approaches and her ambitions of a steady income, a successful career and an ascent of Everest seem as far away as ever, she begins to doubt she’s capable of achieving anything at all. So when her best friend Mick suggests a gruelling cycle ride from Land’s End to John o’Groats, she takes up the challenge. They opt for the scenic route which takes them along cycle paths, towpaths and the back roads and byways of Britain, unable to resist sampling beers in the pubs they pass along the way.

Illuminating, engrossing and full of surprises, The Discovery of France is a literary exploration of a country few will recognize; from maps and migration to magic, language and landscape, it's a book that reveals the 'real' past of France to tell the whole story - and history - of this remarkable nation.

The Silk Road conjures images of the exotic and the unknown. Most travellers simply pass along it. Brit Chris Alexander chose to live there. Ostensibly writing a guidebook, Alexander found life at the heart of the glittering madrassahs, mosques and minarets of the walled city of Khiva — a remote desert oasis in Uzbekistan — immensely alluring, and stayed.

Bloomsbury presents The Gathering Place written and read by Mary Colwell. SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 'Deeply poetic.' CAROLINE LUCAS MP 'A masterpiece of storytelling.' NICK MAYHEW-SMITH 'Mary Colwell is a candle of open-minded curiosity.' PATRICK LAURIE 'An...

LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDHILL HISTORY PRIZE 'An acerbic, compelling and always accessible account of how opium corrupted the world' TLS 'The writing is sublime, the research thorough, the eye for story superb' Sunday Telegraph 'A history of the opium poppy, which probes how the drug trade has...

When Alexandra ("Bo") Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a "tough bugger". Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he told Bo: "Curiosity scribbled the cat." Nonetheless, Fuller began her strange friendship with the man she calls K, a white African and veteran of the Rhodesian war.

On the Road with Penguin Classics is a podcast that takes a stroll around the world's favourite books. In each episode, author and editor Henry Eliot travels to a different literary location to explore a brilliant book in the company of a remarkable reader. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In I Never Knew That About New York, Christopher Winn digs beneath the gleaming towers and mean streets of New York and discovers its secrets and its hidden treasures. Learn about the extraordinary people who built New York into one of the world's great cities in just 400 years. New York is one of the most photographed and talked about cities in the world, but Winn unearths much that is unexpected and unremembered in this fast-moving, ever-changing metropolis.

After her plane crashes, a 17-year-old girl spends 11 days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?

Many dream of dropping everything and just traveling around the world. It's a common dream, but few imagine embarking on that journey by bicycle. Exposed to the elements, legs burning, all your possessions strapped to you and your bicycle - it doesn't paint a relaxing picture, but this is just what Pierre-Yves Tremblay did.

For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon - a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it.

This is a brilliant dual biography charting British Robert Scott's and Norwegian Roald Amundsen's race to the South Pole during 1911-12. Huntuford's is the accepted, definitive account of the race and a reassessment of the two men. Thoroughly researched, revealing the adventures and misfortunes that befell them both, he describes the driving ambitions of the era, and the complex, often deeply flawed individuals who were charged with carrying them out.

Arabian Sands is Wilfred Thesiger’s stunning account of five years spent crossing the Arabian Peninsula by foot and on camels, with nomadic Bedouin tribesmen as guides. Travelling between 1945 and 1950, the British explorer treks through Yemen, the Empty Quarter, Oman, and parts of the then Trucial States, crossing and re-crossing around 250,000 miles of this most inhospitable terrain. He was the first European ever to set eyes on the dunes and wadis of these deserts.

Written in 1831, Irving's dreamlike description of the Alhambra, the beautiful Moorish castle that defined the height of Moorish civilization, and the surrounding territory of Granada remains one of the best guidebooks to the region and one of the most entertaining travelogues ever written.

Ever since I cycled down the west coast of Canada and the United States as a means of saving the bus fare on a round-the-world trip, I dreamed of cycling the whole length of that landmass, from the southern tip of South America all the way up to the Arctic Ocean. Returning home to a job I didn’t enjoy, that dream burned at my mind until, as a mature student in 1999, I was given the opportunity to take a year out and decided now was my time.