A thousand-mile walk that took Martineau from Accra to Ouidah: a spell-binding account of a young man's journey into the world around him as well as himself. Remarkable meetings open doors t... read more
Nick Hunt has previously walked in the footsteps of Paddy Leigh Fermor, and in search of Europe's great winds. His latest takes him - and us - to the remote and extreme: vestiges of ancient ... read more
The author moved to Japan aged 21, immersing herself in language and culture with such success that she is now a literary translator. Her route there was by no means straightforward; this bo... read more
A fascinating Great-Game-ish romp with yaks , spies, political intrigue and a cast that includes not only the Viceroy Curzon but the rather overlooked figure of Sir Charles Bell, British Pol... read more
In 1849 Garibaldi gave up the defence of Rome to the besieging French troops and made his way northwards with a few thousand volunteers; this is an earlier phase of the attempt at Italian li... read more
"It may be that all borderlands hum with the frequencies of the unconscious; after all, borders are where the fabric is thin". This one is that wild, once barbed strip between Turkey, Bulgar... read more
Explores what happens to places where people no longer live: Chernobyl, swathes of Detroit, Caribbean volcanoes, Scottish mining regions - redemptive, reflective.
From the C7th to the present day... It transported Vikings to the Caspian and was crucial in the Battle of Stalingrad... a remarkable account of diversity and strategic significance.
A delicious anthology of ambling, strolling, pausing, looking, thinking... A feast that combines Joseph Roth and Rebecca Solnit, George Sand and Werner Herzog, Joseph Conrad and Kate Humble,... read more
A marvellous history of pilgrimage around the world. Sacred landscapes, geographical hotspots where cultures, religions and trade routes meet, the remote and the metropolitan - and humanity'... read more
PS accompanied the fashion photographer Eric Boman on a shoot in 1976; the Yemen Arab Republic they entered has been closed to foreigners for years and this book documents what they saw trav... read more
Sands, the overloaded former editor of the Today programme, visited ten monasteries around the world hoping to understand what they have in common and how monastic life might help her in her... read more
A life of the indefatigable and intrepid Bird (1831-1904) who travelled in her mid-life to Australia, the United States, Hawaii, Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaya; later sh... read more
Kneale knows the city like few others (viz his Rome: A History in Seven Sackings, pbk £10.99). His writing is also a delight, so his account of lockdown is worth reading.
An illustrated book examining our fascination with islands. Interweaving his own travels with psychology, philosophy and literary voyages, the author explores our contradictory needs for con... read more
Reinvention, escape, adventure, romance, survival... Not all the women were 'port out starboard home'. Gripping and entertaining social history from the author of 'Queen Bees'.
A fascinating introduction to one of the most important Buddhis texts, balanced by Kerr's experiences in Kyoto, Tibet, Mongolia, Korea and India. Kerr has spent most of his adult life living... read more
The authors spend large parts of the year in Svalbard; their focus is the highly adapted wildlife of the Arctic and the effect of climate change on their environment. Fabulous photographs.
Berlin is defined by its many edges - the blurred edge between Huns and Slavs, pagan and Christian, the competing spheres of influence of Western Europe and Russia, autocracy and democracy, ... read more
Copeland has five thousand miles of ice under his skies and is a specialist in the polar regions, the loss of their ice and the geopolitical implications of these changes. Large format, with... read more
The explorer and travel writer's first photographic book draws on his travels around the world, from war zones to traditional ways of rural life, frontier existences and modern technology. H... read more
Walsh is an international correspondent for the New York Times of long standing who was bureau chief in Pakistan for a decade, before his encounter with an intelligence agent and subsequent ... read more
The famous architect and his journalist son share a passion for sailing - the Thames, the Seine, the Pacific, the Mediterranean, far and wide to Athens, San Francisco, Osaka and other sites ... read more
This is a journey as imaginative and cerebral as it is physical: Lees, now an eminent neurologist, used to frequent the Liverpool docks as a child, with his father, and watch the ships unloa... read more
A clever and curious mind is behind this engaging work. Fidler, who first visited Prague during the Velvet Revolution, moves from the medieval origins to the uncertainties of the present day... read more
A remarkable odyssey around the edges of that vast country - through North Korea, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finl... read more
Demick has previously won the Samuel Johnson prize and was short-listed for a Pulitzer. Her account of the modern Tibetan experience is unequalled. The town she writes about is Ngaba, in eas... read more
A dive through other dives: architecture as the key to Soho's history, with its waves of immigrants - Huguenots, East European Jews, Chinese. Has an elegiac quality in the face of the dispir... read more
Boreal forests in Europa, Asia and North America account for a third of the world's trees and are essential for life on this planet. Less than 12% is protected... Large format, with stunning... read more