Europe
A selection of books on European Travel
Main Cities of Europe: Hotels and Restaurants 2009
With over 3000 hotels and restaurants listed and reviewed to suit any budget. Also included are 150 town plans with practical information to help you get around, visit the city, understand the menu or go out for the evening. Michelin Guides have a well established reputation for reliability and this guide reinforces that.
Michelin 2009
ISBN 9782067138261
Pbk £14.99
Venice Pure City
Peter Ackroyd
Peter Ackroyd turns his unparalleled skill at evoking place from London and the River Thames, to Italy and the city of Venice. His account is at once romantic and packed with facts, conjuring up the atmosphere of the canals, bridges and sunlit squares, the churches and the markets, the fiestas and the flowers. He leads us through the history of the city, from the first refugees arriving in the fourth century to the rise of a great mercantile state and a trading empire, the wars against Napoleon and the tourist invasions of today.
Chatto and Windus 2009
ISBN 9780701172855
Hbd £25.00
The Behaviour of Moths
Poppy Adams
Costa First Novel Award 2008 Shortlist
From her lookout on the first floor, Ginny watches and waits for her younger sister to return to the crumbling mansion that was once their idyllic childhood home. Told in Ginny's unforgetable voice, this debut novel tells a disquieting story of two sisters and the ties that bind - sometimes a little too tightly.
Virago Press 2009
ISBN 9781844084883
Pbk £7.99
Jigsaw: An Unsentimental Education
Sybille Bedford
This intensely remembered, partly autobiographical novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1989, describes the childhood of Billi, a girl growing up in Europe between the wars. When her father dies, she swaps life in a run-down German château for an exhilarating existence with her beautiful, talented and unreliable mother on the French Riviera.
Sent away to England for schooling, the gypsy-like Billi ricochets between short-lived tutors and a life of reading, friends and public lectures. Returning to the Mediterranean, her unorthodox education - intellectual, emotional and sexual - continues among the vibrant community of artists, exiles and intellectuals who have colonised the coast, coaxing her towards a life of literature.Eland 1989
ISBN 0907871798
Pbk £12.99
Venice for Lovers
Louis Begley
One of Europe's most romantic destinations this wonderful book is the perfect companion to a few days in Venice or as preparatory reading before you go. A charming collection of writing and memoirs by Louis Begley, author of Wartime Lies, this is a private view of a place which will forever inspire love and passion.
Haus Publishing 2005
ISBN 9781906598280
Pbk £7.99
Paris: Made By Hand
Pia Jane Bijkerk
Stylist Pia Bijkerk leads you to more than fifty shops and studios where you'll find the most original and creative clothing, jewelry, handbags, ceramics, home furnishings and decorative objects all hand made in Paris.
The Little Bookroom 2009
ISBN 9781892145703
Pbk £12.99
Umberto Eco - The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Christian Rutherford writes:
Flicking through this
handsome novel, the first thing one notices is the abundance of small
colour illustrations, mostly of inter-war ephemera: adventure magazine
covers, comic strips, movie posters, advertising, propaganda. It
is through these artefacts that our hero, Yambo, attempts to rediscover
his own identity following a memory-erasing accident. Through
this gradual unveiling of the world of his childhood and adolescence,
he reveals an unexpected self, further questions, contradictions and
elusive truths. This book is at once philosophical, playful and
gripping, as well as being a powerful evocation of northern
Vintage 2006
ISBN 0099481375
Pbk £7.99
The Secret History of Georgian London
Dan Cruickshank
Georgian London evokes images of elegant buildings and fine art, but it was also a city where prostitution was rife, houses of ill repute widespread, and many tens of thousands of people dependent in some way or other on the wages of sin. The sex industry was, in fact, a very powerful force indeed, and in "The Secret History of Georgian London", Dan Cruickshank compellingly shows how it came to affect almost every aspect of life and culture in the capital.
Random House
ISBN 9781847945372
Hbk £25.00
The Big Chill Guide to Summer Living
Phil Daoust
Whether you're looking for international music lineups, intimate encounters with literary greats or something altogether more alternative, there's now a festival to suit every taste under the sun. A comprehensive directory of every event in the UK and across Europe.
Guardian Books 2009
ISBN 9780852651261
Pbk £14.99
Waterlog
Roger Deakin
Inspired by John Cheever's short story "The Swimmer", Roger Deakin set out from his moat in Suffolk to swim through the British Isles. The result of his journey is a maverick work of observation and imagination, a uniquely personal view of an island. Encompassing cultural history, autobiography, travel writing and natural history, Waterlog is a personal journey and an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water.
Vintage 2000
ISBN 9780099282556
Pbk £7.99
Hidden Macedonia
Christopher Deliso
The tectonic lakes of Macedonia, Orhid and Prespa, are among the most ancient and enthralling in the world, abundant in rare wildlife and the seat of medieval kingdoms. This is a fascinating account of a circular summertime journey with his wife and young son around the lakeshores.
Haus Publishing 2007
ISBN 9781905791040
Hbk £12.99
Twighlight of Love - Travels with Turgenev
Robert Dessaix
Ivan Turgenev, one of the greatest of Russia's Golden Age, spent forty years in love with the diva Pauline Viardot. He followed her and her husband around Europe until the day he died. In a truly remarkable work of memoir, literary biography and travel writing, Robert Dessaix has found the pulse that still quickened Turgenev's age, but has failed in ours.
Scribner 2004
ISBN 0743263383
Hbk £12.99
Strolling Through Athens
John Freely
In this indispensable guide John Freely leads the reader on an ingenious and enlightening series of walks to the city's most vibrant and historic areas. Vivid descriptions of Athens' most famous monuments and archaeological sites are interwoven with mythology and anecdote. This guide reveals how the heart of the ancient Athens still beats beneath the living, modern city.
Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2004
ISBN 1850435952
Pbk £12.99
Strolling through Venice: The Definitive Walking Guidebook to 'La Serenissima'
John Freely
Tauris Parke Paperback 2008
ISBN 9781845115784
Pbk £12.99
The Last Leopard: A Biography of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
David Gilmour
David Gilmour's biography of Giuseppe di Lampedusa unearths the life story of the creator of The Leopard, one of the great novels of the twentieth century. A book whose imagery, once tasted, haunts the reader for ever, The Leopard describes the golden era of nineteenth-century Sicily in all its sensual, fading, aristocratic glory. But beneath the surface lurk Sicily's millennial contagions - corruption, brutality and inequality. Who wrote this masterpiece, this work of art? The answer is as unlikely as one might hope. A fascinating meditation on what it is that makes a writer.
Eland 2007
ISBN 9780955010514
Pbk £12.99
Panther Soup: A European Journey in War and Peace
John Gimlette
By may 1945, much of Western Europe lay in ruins. Sixty years on, award-winning travel writer, John Gimlette, begins a journey into the past. Starting in Marseille and ending in the Austrian Tyrol, he travels through some of Europe's most spectacular landscapes, and through cities that have risen from cinders. Along the way he explores old camps and drinking dens, delves into the murky sub-culture of the war, and visits towns still reeling from the trauma. There's a rich cast of survivors too: veterans, prisoners, a heroine of the resistance, a few charlatans, Rommel's son, an Austrian châtelaine and of course, the children of the blitz.
Panther Soup is also the story of friendship and transformation. Foremost amongst the survivors Gimlette encounters is an American who served in the 824th Tank Destroyers, know as the Panthers. Since the war, Putnam Flint lived with the memories of the war. As he and Gimlette travel up the Rhone Valley, and through France, Austria and Germany, visiting villages Flint had shelled and meeting the children of the battlefield, a very different contemporary Europe is revealed.
John Gimlette is also the author of At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: A Riotous Journey into the Heart of Paraguay and Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador.
Hutchinson 2008
ISBN 9780099502388
Pbk £8.99
Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation 1940-1944
Charles Glass
An exciting and fast paced account of the moral contradictions faced by Americans in Paris during France's most dangerous years including bookseller and publisher Sylvia Beach; Countess Clara Longworth de Chambrun; Charles Bedaux and Dr Summer Jackson, wartime chief surgeon at the American hospital in Neuilly.
Highly recommended
Harper Collins 2010
(now in paperback)
(Signed Copies Availble)
ISBN 9780007228522
Hbk £9.99
Serbs, The
Tim Judah
Tim Judah's classic account, now brought fully up to date to include the overthrow of Milosevic, the assassination of Zorun Djindjic, the breakaway of Kosovo and the arrest of Radovan Karadizic.
This is ideally read in tandem with Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia which, in contrast to Judah's modern classic, was written before Yugoslavia disintegrated.
Yale University Press 2009
(Third edition. First and second edition published in 1997 and 2000)
ISBN 9780300158267
Pbk £12.99
The Basque History of the World
Mark Kurlansky
Heading to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao? Then take the Basque History of the World with you. A wonderfully written account of the economic, political, literary and cultural history of the Basque lands. Remote and inward looking, the Basques also pioneered whaling and cod fishing, and lead the way in exploring the New World.
A fascinating cultural study
Vintage 2000
ISBN 9780099284130
Pbk £9.99
Mani
Patrick Leigh Fermor
The Mani, at the heart of Europe's southernmost promontory, is one of
the remotest, wildest and most isolated regions in Greece. Cut off from
the rest of the country by the towering range of the Taygetus and
hemmed in by the Aegean and Ionian seas, it is a land where an ancient
relationship with the past has remained alive - on a daily basis.
Here, in the book that confirmed his reputation as one of the English language's finest writers of prose, Patrick Leigh
Fermor carries the reader with him on his journeys among the Greeks of
the mountains, exploring their history and time-honored lore.
John Murray 2004 (orig.1958)
ISBN 0719566916
Pbk £9.99
Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople - The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates
Patrick Leigh Fermor
The continuation of the journey across Europe begun in A Time of Gifts takes the reader downriver to Budapest, then on horseback across the Great Hungarian Plain and over the Romanian border into Transylvania, discovering a wild and beautiful region of forests and mountains secluded from Western eyes during centuries of religious and national complexity.
Remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies and a variety of sects are all savoured in the approach to the Iron Gates diving the Carpathian mountains and the Balkans where the book ends.
John Murray 1986, 2004
ISBN 9780719566967
Pbk £8.99
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
Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece
Patrick Leigh Fermor
Roumeli is not to be found on present-day maps. It is the name given in the olden times to northern Greece - stretching from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth. Patrick Leigh Fermor was so seduced by the strangeness of this name that he immortalized it in this classic account of his travels there. It is a journey taking in the monasteries of Meteora, the villages of Krakora and Sarakastan shepherds. He even tracks down one of Byron's slippers at Missolonghi. He uncovers the inherent conflict of the Greek's inheritance: a tenuous scholastic link with the glories of the ancient world, and the more recent but no less historic Byzantine heritage and legacy of Ottoman domination.
John Murray 1966
ISBN 9780719566929
Pbk £9.99
Hill of Kronos
Peter Levi
Peter Levi paints a radiant portrait of the Greece he came to know through a lifetime of exploration. As a young scholar he sought out its ancient spirit, the keys to its mythology and civilisation, in its ruined cities and majestic mountains. Later, as a priest working as a diplomat and a friend of the oppressed, he lived in Athens through the dark days of the dictatorship. The sinews of political life led back to secret alliances made during the civil war and the earlier occupation of Greece, back to murder, starvation and corpse-filled quarries.
Lastly he sees the country through the mature eyes of a family man, with the ripened sensibility of an acclaimed poet. This is a precious fusion of experience and insight from one philhellene to all those who have come to love Greece.
Eland 2007
ISBN 9780955010545
Pbk £12.99
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Marina Lewycka
For years, Nadezhda and Vera, two Ukrainian sisters, raised in
England by their refugee parents, have had as little as possible to do
with each other - and they have their reasons. But now they find they'd
better learn how to get along, because since their mother's death their
aging father has been sliding into his second childhood, and an
alarming new woman has just entered his life. Valentina, a bosomy young synthetic blonde from the Ukraine, seems
to think their father is much richer than he is, and she is keen that
he leave this world with as little money to his name as possible. If
Nadazhda and Vera don't stop her, no one will. But separating their
addled and annoyingly lecherous dad from his new love will prove to be
no easy feat - Valentina is a ruthless pro and the two sisters swiftly
realize that they are mere amateurs when it comes to ruthlessness. As Hurricane Valentina turns the family house upside down, old
secrets come falling out, including the most deeply buried one of them
all, from the War, the one that explains much about why Nadazhda and
Vera are so different. In the meantime, oblivious to it all, their
father carries on with the great work of his dotage, a grand history of
the tractor.
Penguin 2006
ISBN 0141020520
Pbk £7.99
The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage
Jan Morris
In the form of a sea voyage, Jan Morris reconstructs the glittering dominion of the Venetian empire, travelling along the historic trade routes from Venice itself to Greece, Crete and Cyprus. This is a true traveller's book, arranged geographically but wandering from the past to the present evoking contemporary landscapes and the tumultuous events of the past.
Penguin 1980, 1990
ISBN 9780140119947
Pbk £9.99
Hav
Jan Morris
When the world's foremost travel writer describes the small city state of Hav, the result is unlike any of her other books. For Hav exists only in one place - the author's imagination.
"Morris has penned a fable about an imaginary abroad to teach us about the here and now" The Independent
Faber and Faber 2006
ISBN 9780571229840
Pbk £7.99
Marina Lewycka - A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Natasha Shafi writes:
As intriguing as the title suggests, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a cocktail of the idiosynchrasies within every family, being both touching and funny at the same time.
The story is told through the eyes of Nadezhda reliving the remarriage of her father to a "glamourous blonde Ukrainian divorcee" - he being 84 and his new wife 36. As the story unfolds we encounter how one family copes with the hilarious yet menacing new young wife. The narrative is interwoven with historical and cultural moments, as well as relationships between fathers and daughters, siblings, husbands and wives, whilst uncovering family truths. This is a book you cannot put down!
Penguin 2006
ISBN 0141020520
Pbk £7.99
Suite française
Irène Némirovsky
In 1941, Irène Némirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through, not in terms of battles and politicians, but by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. She did not live to see her ambition fulfilled, or to know that sixty-five years later, Suite française would be published for the first time, and hailed as a masterpiece. Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ends with Germany turning its attention to Russia, Suite française falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion and make their way through the chaos of France; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected. Némirovsky conceived of Suite française as a four- or five-part novel. It was to be a symphony - her "War and Peace". Although, only two sections were finished before her tragic death, they form a book that is beautifully complete in itself, and awe-inspiring in its understanding of humanity.
Chatto & Windus 2006 (in English)
ISBN 0701178965
Hbk £16.99
David Downing - Zoo Station
Nick Creagh-Osborne writes:
Zoo
Station is not only a tense and subtly understated novel of espionage,
inhabiting the same shadow world as Alan Furst and early John le Carre, it is also
powerfully set in time and place:
Old Street Publishing 2007
ISBN 1905847084
Pbk £10.99
The Countryside Companion
Malcolm Tait and Olive Tayler
From smocking to flocking, Lincoln reds to flower beds, Suffolk Punch to ploughman's lunch, the countryside is crammed full of history, folklore, wit, wisdom and customs. The Countryside Companion is your introduction to them: wether you're a lurcherman or an Archers fan, there's plenty to interest and amuse the seasoned countryman and the curious townie alike.
Robson Books 2005
ISBN 1861059183
Hbk £9.99
Other Colours: Writings on Life, Art, Books and Cities
Pamuk Orhan
A personal selection from 25 year of writing by the Nobel Prize winning author. Includes an original short story, reflections on his recent court case, his first trip to Europe, his father's death and his Nobel Prize speech.
Faber and Faber 2007
Pbk £999.99
Istanbul
Orhan Pamuk
The celebrated novelist Orhan Pamuk explores his idea of Istanbul, mingling personal memoir with cultural history to evoke his home of fifty years. In a beautiful and quite riveting fashion, he transforms the form of autobiography, and what begins as a portrait of the artist as a young man becomes a portrait of an extraordinary city.
Faber & Faber 2005
ISBN 0571218326
Hbk £16.99
Gerald Durrell - My Family and Other Animals
Philip Black, Bookseller, writes:
Transplanted to the warm, lazy and exotic island of Corfu in the 1930s, the young Gerald recounts the antics of his bohemian, yet also very English, family. Grown up Gerald was to inspire a whole generation of environmentalists, but the budding 10 year old naturalist, with tortoises, scorpions, fireflies and 'magenpies' in tow, is a perpetual thorn in the side of his older and equally eccentric siblings: bossy, intellectual Larry (novelist Lawrence Durrell), acne-obsessed Margo and trigger-happy Leslie. Propped up by their mentor Spiro and barely held together by maternal glue, this chaotic family encounters a changing cast of wondrous humans who make the parallel cast of animals appear almost tame. Alive with the colours, sounds and scents of this idyllic Greek island, the achingly funny pages turn themselves. These magical memoirs are as fresh as the day they were first published, over fifty years ago, and an enduring, inspiring, treat.
Penguin 1956
ISBN 0140282599
Pbk £6.99
Tete a Tete: The Lives and Loves of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre
Hazel Rowley
Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, this dual biography portrays one of the world's legendary couple up close: we witness Beauvoir and Sartre with their circle, holding court in Paris cafes. We learn the details of their infamous romantic entanglements with the young Olga Kosakiewicz and others; of their efforts to protest the wars in Algeria and Vietnam; and of Beauvoir's tempestuous love affair with Nelson Algren. We hear the anguished discussions that would lead to Sartre's refusal of the Nobel Prize and listen in on the couple as they comment on each other's great works.
Vintage 2007
ISBN 9780099455547
Pbk £8.99
The Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'Cemetery of Forgotten Books', a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles. To this library, a man brings his ten-year-old son, Daniel, one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is allowed to choose one book and from the dusty shelves pulls The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax. But as Daniel grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his find. What begins as a case of literary curiosity turns into a race to find out the truth behind the life and death of Julian Carax and to those he left behind.
Phoenix 2005
(Translated from the Spanish)
ISBN 0753820250
Pbk £7.99
The Reader
Bernhard Schlink
A compelling meditation on the connections between Germany's past and its present, dramatized with extreme emotional intelligence as the story of a relationship between the narrator and an older woman.
Phoenix 1997
ISBN 9780753804704
Pbk £7.99
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon - A Journey Through Yugoslavia
Rebecca West
First published in 1942, Rebecca West's epic masterpiece is widely regarded as the most illuminating book to have been written on what was once Yugoslavia, essential for anyone attempting to understand the enigmatic history of the Balkan states.
Canongate 2006
(First published in Great Britain by Macmillan in 1942)
ISBN 9781841957876
Pbk £15.99
