Essays & Travelogues

Dan Boothby had been drifting for more than twenty years, without the pontoons of family, friends or a steady occupation. He was looking for but never finding the perfect place to land. Finally, unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. After a...

In June 1863 an English lady set off by train on the trip of a lifetime: Thomas Cook's first Conducted Tour of Switzerland. A century and a half later, travel writer Diccon Bewes, author of the bestselling Swiss Watching, decided to go where she went and...

'Often, at the hour of day when the savannah grass is streaked with silver, and pale gold rims the silhouettes of the hills, I drive with my dogs up to the Mukutan, to watch the sun setting behind the lake, and the evening shadows settle over the valleys...

One summer, Simon Armitage decided to walk the Pennine Way - a challenging 256-mile route usually approached from south to north, with the sun, wind and rain at your back. However, he resolved to tackle it back to front, walking home towards the...

With the help of a Maratha nobleman, Mark Shand buys an elephant named Tara and rides her over six hundred miles across India to the Sonepur Mela, the world's oldest elephant market. From Bhim, a drink-racked mahout, Shand learned to ride and care for...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781848409286Author Grainne LyonsFormat PaperbackPage Count 248Imprint New Island BooksPublisher New Island BooksWeight(grams) 350gDimensions(mm) 198mm *...

'Both moving and hilarious' Spectator, Books of the Year'A tale of gloriously eccentric British pensioners. Aitken rivals Alan Bennett in the ear he has for an eavesdropped remark ... boy, can he write.' Daily Mail, Book of the WeekFROM THE AUTHOR OF THE...

'Both moving and hilarious' Spectator, Books of the Year'A tale of gloriously eccentric British pensioners. Aitken rivals Alan Bennett in the ear he has for an eavesdropped remark ... boy, can he write.' Daily Mail, Book of the WeekFROM THE AUTHOR OF THE...

A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's wonderfully illustrated guide to Victorian London, dating from 1862. Bradshaw's guide to London was published in a single volume as a handbook for visitors to the capital. It includes beautiful engravings of London...

A Wall Street Journal Bestseller! In the tradition of Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, let the author of I'll Never Be French introduce you to Brittany a world of color and flavor that most of us only fantasize about.Every year upon arriving in Plobien,...

"A sensitive, personal journey expressed through the beauty of food - just wonderful" - Jamie Oliver"Olia Hercules is a storyteller-foodwriter, and a wholly original voice in the kitchen - there's not a recipe of hers I don't want to cook immediately" -...

In I Know You Got Soul, Jeremy Clarkson writes about the machines that he believes have 'soul'. It will come as no surprise to anyone that Jeremy Clarkson loves machines. But it's not just any old bucket of blots, cogs and bearings that rings his bell...

Jan Morris (then James) first visited Trieste as a soldier at the end of the Second World War. Since then, the city has come to represent her own life, with all its hopes, disillusionments, loves and memories. Here, her thoughts on a host of subjects -...

Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair's foray into one of London's most fascinating boroughs'As detailed and as complex as a historical map, taking the reader hither and thither with no care as to which might be the most direct...

Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair's foray into one of London's most fascinating boroughs'As detailed and as complex as a historical map, taking the reader hither and thither with no care as to which might be the most direct...

'Warm, funny . . . It's had my whole family howling with laughter and shedding a few tears' - Shappi Khorsandi, Guardian'A proper travelogue - a joyful, moving and stereotype-busting tale' - National Geographic Traveller, Books of the YearIn 2011, at...

'An exceptional book. Sailing Alone belongs on the very small shelf of the true classics of the sea' Peter Nichols, author of Sea Change and A Voyage for Madmen'Colourful and inventive' The TimesSailing on a boat by yourself out at sea and out of sight...

'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said...' Mike Parker, presenter of Radio 4's On the Map, celebrates the richness of all things maps in this fantastic, critically-acclaimed read. On an average day, we will consult...

'My name is Mike and I am a map addict. There, it's said...' Mike Parker, presenter of Radio 4's On the Map, celebrates the richness of all things maps in this fantastic, critically-acclaimed read. On an average day, we will consult...

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of when Dick Proenneke first broke ground and made his mark in the Alaskan wilds in 1968, this bestselling memoir features an all-new foreword by Nick Offerman plus color...

'They are memorials to times and countries whose best is probably past and gone . . . I was lucky to have known them when I did, before darkness began to fall from the air.'When Laurie Lee first left his country village aged nineteen, he discovered a...

As one of Britain's best and most-loved travel writers, Jan Morris has led an extraordinary life. Perhaps her most remarkable work is this grippingly honest account of her ten-year transition from man to woman - its pains and joys, its frustrations and...

'An enlightening, enjoyable and frequently very funny journey into what makes Yorkshire stand out from the crowd ... a fascinating insight into our wonderful region and the people that make it what it is.' The Yorkshire PostWritten from the perspective...

In this stunning large-format book, British mountaineer Alan Hinkes describes for the first time in one place his experiences of climbing all 14 of the peaks over 8000m: the world's highest mountains, in the Himalaya and Karakoram. While the photographs...

With superb skill and feeling, Graham Greene retraces the experiences and encounters of his extraordinary life. His restlessness is legendary; as if seeking out danger, Greene travelled to Haiti during the nightmare rule of Papa Doc, Vietnam in the last...

'We've left a lot of men in Borneo - know what I mean?' With their SAS trainer's warnings ringing in their ears, the naturalist, Redmond O'Hanlon, and the poet, James Fenton, set out to rediscover the lost rhinoceros of Borneo. They were loaded with...

'Reading Brodsky's essays is like a conversation with an immensely erudite, hugely entertaining and witty (and often very funny) interlocutor' Wall Street JournalWatermark is Joseph Brodsky's witty, intelligent, moving and elegant portrait of Venice...

Tony Anderson set out in the summer of 1998 to walk through Georgia. He wanted particularly to visit the Georgian mountain tribes - Tush, Khevsurs, Ratchuelians and Svans - to discover if they shared a common mountain culture, and to test the old idea of...

'He found many marvelous things...But now and then a man of real spirituality set his feet on the way that finally led him to what he had looked and hoped for.' New York Times Book Review The late Paul Brunton was one of the twentieth century's...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780767927703Author Dianne HalesFormat PaperbackPage Count 336Imprint Broadway Books (A Division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group Inc)Publisher...

Ludicrous, heart-warming and improbably inspirational, Spanish Steps is the story of what happens when a rather silly man tries to walk all the way across a very large country, with a very large animal who doesn't really want to.Being larger than a cat,...

Alexis de Tocqueville visited Ireland in the company of his good friend Gustave de Beaumont in July and August of 1835. At the time of his visit, Tocqueville had just acquired an international reputation with the publication of the first two volumes of...

Winner of the the British Academy Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding 2018 Winner of the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year 2017 Winner of the 2017 Highland Book Prize Winner of the Saltire Society Book of the Year 2017 ...

FINALIST FOR THE CUNDILL PRIZE FOR HISTORY 'Not only deserves the description "epic", in its true sense, but the term "masterpiece" as well' Independent This gripping epic tells the story of one of the world's most critical failed...

The gripping story of the lure of porcelain, or 'white gold', from the Number One bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes.** A Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller ** "Other things in the world are white but for me porcelain comes first" A handful of...

"Am I giving the impression that I don't like the Veneto? It's not true. I love it. But like any place that's become home I hate it too."How does an Englishman cope when he moves to Italy - not the tourist idyll but the real Italy? When Tim Parks first...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781101974285Author Peter MayleFormat PaperbackPage Count 208Imprint Vintage BooksPublisher Random House USA Inc

Wander off the beaten track to uncover the world's most secret destinations through insightful text and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations: discover an ancient gateway to the Mayan underworld, a mysterious underwater monument sunken off the Ryukyu...

Discover Colin Thubron's journey through central asia in the wake of the fall of the iron curtain.Thubron travelled throughout Central Asia in the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Union and documented the widespread social upheaval in a region reeling...

All At Sea is a celebration of the epic absurd, an attempt to explain just how out of hand things can become from a very simple starting point. The book follows the author's death-defying 200-mile journey in his antique Thomas Crapper bath - not just...