Essays & Travelogues

A powerful unforgettable journey through China with one of our greatest travel writers.'An achievement of great and lasting brilliance' Patrick Leigh FermorHaving learned Mandarin, and travelling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron set off on...

This book is a lush and beautiful memoir of a very special house and a superb recreation of a bygone era. In 1967, veteran travel writer Eric Newby and his heroic wife Wanda fulfiled their dream of a return to life in the Italian hills where...

'A memorable, oddly beautiful book' Wall Street Journal'A marvellous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country's public image' Washington PostOne sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that...

'Sebald is the Joyce of the 21st Century' The TimesWhat begins as the record of W. G. Sebald's own journey on foot through coastal East Anglia, from Lowestoft to Bungay, becomes the conductor of evocations of people and cultures past and present. From...

'Magnificent' Robert MacfarlaneWinner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the YearOur lives depend on shipping but it is a world which is largely hidden from us. In every lonely corner of every sea, through every night, every day, and every imaginable...

On the same day that his wife gave birth to twins, Anthony Doerr received the Rome Prize, an award that gave him a year-long stipend and studio in Rome... 'Four Seasons in Rome' charts the repercussions of that day, describing Doerr's varied...

A Waterstones Travel Book of the Year 2023 A funny, warm and timely meditation on identity and belonging, following the scenic route along the England-Wales border: Britain's deepest faultline. There is a...

Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons: a night of love, a stay in a luxury hotel, or simply to disappear for a while. Lawrence Osborne comes for the cheap dentistry, and then stays when he finds he can live off just a few dollars a day.Osborne's...

Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons: a night of love, a stay in a luxury hotel, or simply to disappear for a while. Lawrence Osborne comes for the cheap dentistry, and then stays when he finds he can live off just a few dollars a day.Osborne's...

An uplifting, humorous memoir of a mother building a new life on a beautiful Sicilian island. Reeling from a broken relationship, Ros Belford decides the best chance she has of healing, while giving her daughters a childhood to remember, is to move to...

The author takes us on an unexpected journey up the Danube, where we encounter a remarkable and unfamiliar world The magnificent Danube both cuts across and connects central Europe, flowing through and alongside ten countries: Romania, Ukraine,...

It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life - a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in...

Hailed as Newby's 'masterpiece', Love and War in the Apennines is the gripping real-life story of Newby's imprisonment and escape from an Italian prison camp during World War II. After the Italian Armistice of 1943, Eric Newby escaped from the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780812992182Author Rolf PottsFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint VillardPublisher Random House USA Inc

When Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusk's sharp...

When Christian Brechneff first set foot on the Greek island of Sifnos, it was the spring of 1972 and he was a twenty-one-year-old painter searching for artistic inspiration and a quiet place to work. There, this Swiss child of Russian emigres, adrift and...

A pilot's love letter to the world's greatest cities from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Skyfaring'A journey around both the author's mind and the planet's great cities that leaves us energised, open to new experiences and ready to return more...

WINNER: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER READER AWARD FOR BEST TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016WINNER: BOOKS ARE MY BAG READER AWARD FOR BEST AUTOBIOGRAPHY OR BIOGRAPHY 2016Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and...

A modern classic on exploring and understanding the Antarctic, the most uncharted place on our planet. Terra Incognita is a meditation on the landscape, myths and history of one of the remotest parts of the globe, as well as an encounter with the...

Ibn Battutah - ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian and occasional botanist - was just twenty-one when he set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on a pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not return to Morocco for another twenty-nine years, travelling...

From the author of the widely acclaimed Heat, an exhilarating account of Bill Buford's adventures in the world of French cooking.'A romping, chomping, savoury tour de force... Hilarious' Simon SchamaWhat does it take to master French cooking? This is the...

One small East African country embodies the battered history of the continent: patronised by colonialists, riven by civil war, confused by Cold War manoeuvring, proud, colorful, with Africa's best espresso and worst rail service. Michela Wrong...

Acclaimed chefs Tony Singh and Cyrus Todiwala are on a mission to wake Britain up to the versatility of spices.For too long, our spices have sat unused and dusty in cupboard shelves, when just a mere sprinking of cumin, a dash of turmeric or a handful of...

'Hooper has written a fascinating, affectionate and well-researched study that delivers the tantalising flavour of a country as hot, cold, bitter and sweet as an affogato' The Telegraph'This portrait of a nation is required reading for anyone heading to...

"Tom Chesshyre is the consummate traveller, who makes you want to experience all his adventures and mishaps for yourself." - Christian Wolmar, author of British Rail: The Making and Breaking of Our TrainsFrom London via Paris, Naples, Nuremberg, the...

A Sunday Times Book of the Week and Top 10 Bestseller A Waterstones Travel Book of the Year 2023 A Spectator Book of the Year 2023 What kind of country is England today? ...

The only way to truly discover a city, they say, is on foot. Taking this to extremes, Mark Mason sets out to walk the entire length of the London Underground - overground - passing every station on the way.In a story packed with historical trivia,...

Setting off in his hometown, and ending up 'almost at the end of the world', Paul Theroux's The Old Patagonian Express is a travel writing tour de force from one of the masters of the genre contains a new preface by the author in Penguin Modern Classics...

'Out of the sea, as if Homer himself had arranged it for me, the islands bobbed up, lonely, deserted, mysterious in the fading light'Enraptured by a young woman's account of the landscapes of Greece, Henry Miller set off to explore the Grecian...

A TIMES BESTSELLER'One of the funniest books of the year' - Paul Ross, talkRADIOWARNING: CONTAINS AN UNLIKELY IMMIGRANT, AN UNSUNG COUNTRY, A BUMPY ROMANCE, SEVERAL SHATTERED PRECONCEPTIONS, TRACES OF INSIGHT, A DOZEN NUNS AND A REFERENDUM.Not many Brits...

Dark Star Safari is Paul Theroux's now classic account of a journey from Cairo to Cape Town.Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, Theroux visits some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth,...

Dark Star Safari is Paul Theroux's now classic account of a journey from Cairo to Cape Town.Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, Theroux visits some of the most beautiful landscapes on earth,...

A gripping account of an under-reported island' Spectator, Book of the Year '[A] brilliant new book about an island that has a geography from heaven and a history from hell' Daily Telegraph'A brilliant work of travel, history and psychological insight...

TV presenter, writer and adventurer Alice Morrison gives her own unique and personal insight into Morocco, the place she's made her home. When Alice Morrison headed out to Morocco, it was to take on one of the most daunting challenges: to run in the...

H.V. Morton's evocative account of his days in 1950s Rome,the fabled era of La Dolce Vita,remains an indispensable guide to what makes the Eternal City eternal. In his characteristic anecdotal style, Morton leads the reader on a well-informed and...

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE STANFORD DOLMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD*The Rhine is one of the world's greatest rivers. Once forming the outer frontier of the Roman Empire, it flows 800 miles from the social democratic playground of the Netherlands, through...

"...a fascinating barometer of the state of the nation right now, in the wake of austerity, Brexit and Covid." - Travis Elborough England's seaside is made up of a striking variety of coastlines including cliffs, coves, pebbled shore, wide sandy...

The hilarious bestselling travel book that journeys round areas made famous by Radio 4's Shipping Forecast'One of those simple yet brilliant ideas' Daily Mail'Engaging and often very funny' Sunday Times'A wonderfully eccentric study' ObserverThe Shipping...

The Okavango Delta, Botswana: a lush wetland in the middle of the Kalahari desert. Aged 19, Peter Allison thought he would visit for a short holiday before going home to get a 'proper job'. But Peter fell in love with southern Africa and its wildlife and...

'Byrne comes across like a post-punk Michael Palin.' Sephen Dalton, The Times 'An engaging book; part-diary, part-manifesto.' Observer David Byrne, co-founder of the group Talking Heads, has been riding a bicycle as his principal means of...