Classic Travel Writing

 

Venice

Jan Morris

An impassioned portrait of one of the world's most glorious cities. Divided into three sections which explore the Venetian people, the city itself and the lagoon on which it stands, Venice enriches any visit to that great city - be it in person, or simply in mind.

"No sensible visitor should visit the place without it...Venice stands alone as the essential introduction, and as a work of literature in its own right." Observer

For more books by Jan Morris, click here
For more books about Venice, click here

Faber and Faber 1960, 1993

ISBN 9780571168972

Pbk £9.99

Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle

Dervla Murphy

When Dervla Murphy was ten, she was given a bicycle and an atlas, and within days she was secretly planning a trip to India. At the age of thirty-one, in 1963, she finally set off and this book is based on the daily diary she kept while riding through Persia, Afghanistan and over the Himalayas to Pakistan and India.
A lone woman on a bicycle (with a revolver in her trouser pocket) was an almost unknown occurrence and a focus of enormous interest wherever she went. Undaunted by snow in alarming quantites, and using her .25 pistol on starving wolves in Bulgaria and to scare lecherous Kurds in Persia, her resourcefulness and the blind eye she turned to personal danger and extreme discomfort were remarkable.

Eland Press 1965, 2010

ISBN 9781906011406

Pbk £12.99

Wheels within Wheels: The Makings of a Traveller

Dervla Murphy

What is it that makes us who we are? In this beautifully written and searingly honest autobiography, the intrepid cyclist and traveller Dervla Murphy remembers her richly unconventional first thirty years. She describes her determined childhood self - strong-willed and beguiled by books from the first - her intermittent formal education and the intense relationship of an only child with her parents, particularly her invalid mother whom she nursed until her death. Here lie the roots of Dervla's gift for friendship, her love of writing, her curiosity, her hatred of cant, her hardiness and her desire to travel. Bicycling fifty miles in a day at the age of eleven, alone, it seems only natural that her first major journey should have been to cycle to India.

Eland Press 2010

(Signed copies available)

ISBN 9781906011413

Pbk £12.99

A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople - From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube

Patrick Leigh Fermor

At the age of eighteen Patrick Leigh Fermor set out to walk from Rotterdam to Istanbul. He sets off just as the Nazis take over in Germany and A Time of Gifts is at once a memoir of coming-of-age, an account of a journey and a portrait of a continent already showing ominous signs of the holocaust to come. This is the classic memoir of an enchanted journey across pre-war Europe.

The journey continues in Between the Woods and the Water.

For more books by Patrick Leigh Fermor click here

John Murray 1977, 2004

ISBN 9780719566950

Pbk £9.99

The Shadow of the Sun: My African Life

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Drawn to the Developing World through an impoverished wartime upbringing, Kapuscinski arrived in Ghana in 1957 and was on hand to witness the tumultuous years in which colonial Africa was dismantled, resulting in born-again countries ripe for ransacking by despots. From the glare of Accra airport which greets him on first arrival, to the Tanzanian night of the final pages, he crosses savannah, desert and city by foot, road and train, searching out the two most important, yet inconstant commodities on the continent: shade and water. Threatened by an Egyptian cobra, cursed with cerebral malaria and tuberculosis, plagued by black cockroaches the size of small turtles, Kapuscinski intermingles the immediate and the reflective in 29 satisfyingly fragmented vignettes, encompassing historical narratives and personal experience across a host of countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nigeria, Sudan and Liberia.

For more books by Ryszard Kapuscinski click here

Penguin 1998

ISBN 9780140292626

Pbk £8.99

In Patagonia

Bruce Chatwin

Fascinated by Patagonia ever since an early childhood lust for his Grandma's scrap of hairy Giant Sloth skin, Bruce Chatwin is intrigued by odd miners, Darwin, the Welsh and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. From Rio Negro to the southernmost town of Ushuaia, Chatwin depicts all in writing as spare as the Patagonian desert and as vibrant as the purple clouds off Last Hope Sound.

For more books by Bruce Chatwin, click here.

Vintage 1977, 2006

ISBN 9780099769514

Pbk £7.99

Slowly Down the Ganges

Eric Newby

The story of the 12,000-mile journey made by Eric Newby and his wife down the holy river of India, from Hardwar where it enters the great plain down to where the waters of the Hooghly finally flow into the Bay of Bengal.
Travelling in a variety of boats, sometimes by rail, bus and bullock cart, staying on sandbanks, in villages and in towns, they encountered an engaging assortment of characters and the dusty enchantment of India.
Illustrated with b/w photographs.

For other books by Eric Newby click here

Picador 1995

ISBN 9780330280235

Pbk £8.99

Journey Into The Mind's Eye

Lesley Blanch

Lesley Blanch was four when the mysterious Traveller first blew into her nursery, swathed in Siberian furs and full of the fairytales of Russia. She was twenty when he swept out of her life, leaving her love-lorn and in the grips of a passionate obsession. The search to recapture the love of her life, and the Russia he had planted within her, takes her to Siberia and beyond, journeying deep into the romantic terrain of the mind's eye.

Eland 1968, 2005

ISBN 9780907871545

Pbk £12.99

In Morocco

Edith Wharton

A classic account of the author's travels in Morocco in the last days of the First World War. The famed novelist travels by military vehicle from Rabat and Fez to Moulay Idriss and Marrakesh capturing a country at a moment of transition from an almost unknown, roadless empire to a popular tourist destination.

For more books about Morocco, click here

Stanfords Travel Classics 1920 (2009)

ISBN 9781906780036

Pbk £6.99

Behind the Wall

Colin Thubron

A journey of 10,000 miles from Beijing to the borders of Burma. Thubron travelled through the wind-swept wastes of the Gobi desert, and finished at the far end of the Great Wall.

Vintage 1987

ISBN 9780099459323

Pbk £8.99

A View of the World: Selected Journalism

Norman Lewis

Collected between these covers are twenty of Norman Lewis's finest pieces of travel writing, spanning a period of 30 years. He brings us face to face with Castro's executioner, with a tragic Ernest Hemingway and with the unchanged lifestyle of fishermen in an unspoilt Ibiza. He describes the gentle pleasures of Belize, the ferocious blood feuds of Sardinian bandits and the unpleasant duty of repatriating Cossacks to the Soviet Union in 1944
At the heart of the collection is Lewis's famous report on the genocide of the Brazilians Indians, which led to the creation of Survival International - which campaigns for the rights of tribal peoples. This, Lewis felt, was the most important achievement of his professional life.

For more books by Norman Lewis, please click here

Eland 1986

ISBN 9780907871439

Pbk £12.99

The Great Railway Bazaar: A Train Through Asia

Paul Theroux

A trip of discovery made in the mid-Seventies from London to India and then on to south-east Asia and Japan, returning to London on the trans-Siberian express. 

Penguin 1975

ISBN 9780141038841

Pbk £9.99

A Tramp Abroad

Mark Twain

Twain's account of travelling in Europe in 1878 sparkles with the author's shrewd observations and highly opinionated comments on Old World culture incorporating humorous sketches, autobiographical tidbits, and historical anecdotes.
Adventures include a voyage by raft down the Neckar and an ascent of Mont Blanc by telescope.

Penguin 1880 (1997)

ISBN 0140436081

Pbk £8.99

The Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain

Considered to be the first American travel book, Innocents Abroad details Twain's travels in Europe and the Holy Lands taking in countries as diverse as Spain, Morocco, France, Italy, Lebanon and Egypt. Introduction by Jane Jacobs

Modern Library Classics 1869 (2003)

ISBN 9780812967050

Pbk £11.99

 

Back to previous page.