Despite often possessing cameras, grand tourists persisted in using watercolours. This fascinating, wide-ranging illustrated book explores attitudes towards the picturesque, Empire, the Orie... read more
Lucy Atkinson (1817-1893) was an English Atkinson was an English nanny working in Russia. In 1848 she set out with her new husband on a six-year exploration of Siberia and Central Asia, by f... read more
From the collection of an Italian banker whose work financed infrastructure such as railways, mines, electric power stations and shipping companies in the Near East.
That venerable and dedicated historian of ancient India travelled half a century ago to northern and north-western China to work at the cave sites of Maijishan and Dunhuang; based on her dia... read more
Some may have supposed that Thubron had done his last Big Journey, but this is arguably his biggest yet, and most arduous. Indomitable, venerable, he follows this immense river from its sour... read more
Begins with a Perec epigraph: "De l'autobus, je regarde Paris" - and Elkin does, in a diary of vignettes about the 'infra-ordinary' (Perec again): fellow commuters, a diversion, a girl with ... read more
In this new book Sinclair has abandoned London for Peru, in an attempt to understand his great-grandfather's colonial career. The narrative Sinclair grew up with ends up as self-serving flot... read more
There was a bit of a gap between Anthony and Cleopatra's Nile cruises and the C19th heyday of purpose-built, shallow-bottomed paddle-wheelers. This book is about the latter - delicious trave... read more
New edition of these wonderful, open-eyed letters by the wife of the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte; fascinating glimpses of the world of Ottoman women, not least their practice of ... read more