Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Travel]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor PenguinsAlastair Humphreys|authortitle=Gavin FrancisLocal

|genre=Travel|summary=I know two books don't make a genre, but twice in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues of men who felt too much was going on in their lives Alastair Humphreys has walked and their surroundings, cycled all over the world. And then written about it. For this book he walked and took themselves off cycled very close to remote, isolated, extremely cold home and inhospitable placesthen wrote about it. One went to the shores of Lake Baikal, and shared As he says in his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighbours. Gavin Francis took himself southintroduction, to the edge of the Antarctic ice, book is an attempt ''to spend share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year as exploring a scientific doctorsmall map. He wasn't able to be completely as alone as some have been in the past – even if he hid himself away in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was through. Francis ends up with a baker's dozen of companionsNature loss, pollution, in a place where – apart from the iceland use and access, sealing things up – only two lockable doors exist. You might think this was a large group of people for someone wanting to be aloneagriculture, but the very tenuous and isolated feel food system, rewilding…'' One of the place in the huge emptiness joys of the landscape is book for me was that the main point biggest thing he learned about all of this book – these things was thatthere are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and communing with emperor penguins…that there are some hard choices ahead.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009956596X</amazonuk>1785633678

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Moss0957181167|title=Smoothly From HarrowBlue Skies and Boat Trips: A Compendium for the London CommuterThe Norfolk of Brian Lewis|author=Alan Marshall|rating=45|genre=AnthologiesArt|summary=If you want There are few positive things which can be said about a substandard apartment when you’re on holiday but this time, in trying to get ''behind'' what commuting is really like - not in an academic or avoid looking at a problem I found myself looking more closely at a political way, but from couple of pictures on the perspective of having your hand through a strap walls - and wishing that was completely taken by the man next to you wasn't ''quite'' so enamoured work of Brut aftershave - then you need a travel journalistBrian Lewis. Step forward (but mind the gap), Chris Moss, who writes regularly for the ''Daily Telegraph'' I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and has done the same for the ''Guardian'', ''Independent'' and various magazinesprint I wanted was ‘not available’. Most importantlyOh, he's commuted dear - then a few doors down from Camberwellthe apartment, Camden, Hackney, Harrow, Herne Hill, Surbiton I found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books - and Tooting. Personally, a framed print of the picture I think he deserves a medalwanted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905131623</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=Slow Train to SwitzerlandCharging Around: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World Exploring the Edges of Change Apart England by Electric Car|author=Diccon BewesClive Wilkinson|rating=4.5

|summary=After several years in my position in relation to the book industry (on the periphery but left Clive Wilkinson has a bit – and round the bend history of travelling by unconventional means with a lot) I am never surprised at what has a marketpreference for slow travel. Every niche has either been filled, or is getting there. So when I found in looking into this book that As he neared his eightieth birthday the author has written several before now, all extolling idea of exploring the virtues edges of Switzerland, I England in an electric car was not surprisedtotally outrageous. I was only regretting he hadn't chosen In fact, it should be a cheaper country pleasant holiday for us to likewise fall in love with. StillClive and his wife, Joan, all power to the authorshouldn's elbow, as regardless of any other journalism he has produced from exploring the country, here he writes about one lengthy trip around the more popular parts with fresh and new-seeing eyes, helped by those who really were seeing t it for the first time, a century and a half ago. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886097</amazonuk>?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sea Monsters: The Lore and Legacy of Olaus Magnus's Marine MapMerryn Glover|authortitle=Joseph NiggThe Hidden Fires|rating=4.5|genre=Popular ScienceTravel|summary=A confession. When reading hardbacks I take It is always about the book, not the paper coverwriter, if but there are times when the author's hinterland is also the background to the book and so it is one, offnecessary to understand that context, in order to keep it pristineappreciate the book. Sometimes there's a second benefit, with [[Longbourn by Jo Baker]] as an example Merryn Glover is of having an embossed illustration underneathAustralian parentage, or suchlike. But with this book I won't be alonewas born in Kathmandu, for grew up in the cover folds out into an amazing artwork, such as has only two extant original copiesAnnapurna and Himalayan and now lives in Badenoch in Scotland. It's I can think of no-one better a coloured replica of combination to give us a large map re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than the northern seas and Scandinavia, dating from 1539, and is first Writer in Residence in a category of three major artful scientific papers from where the whole 'here be dragons' cliché about maps comes fromCairngorms National Park. Its creator Merryn walks, Olaus Magnus, followed it up years later with a commentary not so much in the shadow of all the sea creatures he drew on itShepherd, but Magnus has waited centuries for this delicious volume to commentate on both together, in such a lovely fashionher spirit. I think the two would have gotten along famously.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782400435</amazonuk>1846975751

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0B7289HKQ|title=An Armenian SketchbookConversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America|author=Vasily GrossmanKari Loya

|summary=In 1961Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, noted Soviet man of letters Vasily Grossman went by the way) wanted to Armenia, for a couple of months' research spend some time with his father and fact-finding, while he was working on transforming an Armenian novel of no small length into Russian. (You can't call it translating, as he didn't speak Armenian beyond the period between two words – he really was paid jobs seemed like a good time to rewrite do it to some extent in his fashion.) With time spent in The decision was made to ride the capitalTrans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, YerevanVirginia to Astoria, and Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in other rural areas, he got an intimate flavour of the country and its people, and this book is the resulting piece2015. It's not really accurate They had 73 days to call do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a travelogue, challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it covers just a patch here, a topic there, and is in no correct order as such – and the author calls it a literary memoiron. What you can call it, however, is a successMerv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857052357</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Tim Moore|title=You Are Awful (But I Like You): Travels Through Unloved Britain|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=This Erligg Kagge is not a Norwegian explorer who has walked to the first book ISouth Pole, the North Pole and the summit of Everest. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, this isn've read t a travelogue about the scummyany of those epic journeys, unloved corners it is instead a thoughtful exploration of our country, and I approached what it in just the same way I did with the last - I looked means to see if it might feature Leicester, where I livewalk. The opinion seems to be that you can only like Leicester enough to be proud It is a plenitude of it if youunnumbered essays about walking. There is no 'contents're not from there originally - page and as I grew up on the edge of a village in the middle of nowhere, it suits me fine. But no - despite its problems (thanks, Labour councils) it doesnhaven't countcounted. It's not grottyIn small format paperback, ugly, run-down and unappreciated enougheach essay is only a few pages long. It still has some semblance of lifePerhaps then, unlike too many towns and cities in Britain where the industry, the jobs, the life and the better thought have been sucked out, seemingly beyond repair. After stumbling upon the nightmare that is the out-of-season, redundant English coastal town, our author has valiantly journeyed round many of these grot-spots, and found the story of decrepitude only exacerbatingas a meditation rather than an essay.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099546930</amazonuk>0241357705

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick KingsleyMonica Connell|title=How To Be Danish: From Lego to Lund. A Short Introduction to the State of DenmarkAgainst a Peacock Sky|rating=4.5

|summary=FirstMonica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it is important to know that. She went on a grant-supported trip, the bad newswith a relatively specific objective. She wasn't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-la. This slim volume wonShe wasn't actually tell you a mere tourist passing through. She went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people and how to become a Danish personthey lived. She also went, presumably, despite with the title. What it will doacademic discipline of how to find these things out, thoughhow to organise them in her mind, is give you a new appreciation for how to "understand" them in the people context of Denmarkher own paradigms, and quite possibly make you want how to jump on keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the first plane event. Fortunately, she also went with a sense of open-ness and curiosity and a willingness to Copenhagen muck-in, to savour what is, according break her own rules and to truly connect with the United Nations, the happiest country in people of the worldvillage where she hauled up.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721331</amazonuk>1780600429

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cees Nooteboom and Laura Watkinson (Translator) Nicolas Bouvier|title=Roads to Berlin The Japanese Chronicles

|summary='Whoever controls Berlin controls Germany and whoever controls Germany controls Europe' is It never does to start a review of a book with a remark which is attributed to Lenin. Until November 1989, the Berlin Wall bisected quote from the historic city and divided its citizens from each other. Berlin was occupiedblurb, militarised and yet its people carried on with their daily lives amongst the ruinsbut sometimes it's unavoidable. Cees NooteboomLe Monde reviewed this book, a distinguished Dutch travel writerat some point, knew something of with the devastation of words ''what the pastold master craftsmen would call a masterpiece. He '' It is old enough to have experienced, and at impressionable age, precisely that. A masterpiece in the Nazi Blitzkreig and occupation sense of Holland. A sensitive and susceptible person, he meditates upon the various strata craft as well as the art of meaning, history, heroism and time itselfwriting. The result I'm going to hesitate to call it 'travel writing' because this is as much a prose poem on history of Japan, a unique city that mythology-primer for the Japanese culture as it is condemned a personal response to be constantly developing, becoming rather than just beingliving and travelling in the country.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050265</amazonuk>1906011044

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon GarfieldStephen Fabes|title=On The MapSigns of Life

|summary=You might think that there's not a lot which could be said about I was brought up on maps and first- but you'd be completely wrongperson narratives of tales of far away places. This is staggeringly good I was birth- one of the very best non-fiction books righted wanderlust and curiosity. Unfortunately, Ididn've read all yeart inherit what Dr. Garfield takes us from Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the Great Library of Alexandria guts to a map of the brain, via maps in films, treasure maps simply go out and JM Barriedo it. I also didn's hatred of folding maps. Alternating between full chapters which tell t inherit the stories kind of cartographers and their maps in roughly chronological ordersteady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and shorter entries bearing basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the title requisite 'Pocket Mapbottle' which pick out particularly interesting trivia, there. In order words I's m not the sort of person who will get on a bike outside a dull entry in the bookLondon hospital and not come home for six years. Fabes did precisely that. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846685095</amazonuk>1788161211

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon ArmitageRob Baker|title=Walking HomeToubab Tales: The Joys and Trials of Expat Life in Africa

|summary=Poet Simon Armitage decided in 2010 to walk the Pennine Way 'in reverse' - instead of heading "Go to ScotlandMali, he" they said. "The music is amazing," they said. "And you get ten hours of sunshine every day." So I did.'d start just across the border and walk in the direction of his native Yorkshire' Rob Baker is an ethnomusicologist. ''A what?'' I hear you cry. As if doing it this wayWell, with the sun, wind and rain an ethnomusicologist studies music in his face wasn't hard enoughrelation to culture, he also challenged himself to do it without so rather like a penny to his name, earning cash for folklorist studies the journey by giving poetry readings in pubs, village halls oral and living roomswritten story traditions relating to a culture. Could he make a 256-mile journey supported only by the kindness of strangers and his own willpower?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571249884</amazonuk>B089CSNFT7

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cathy Birchall and Bernard SmithChristine Brown|title=Touching The WorldBucket Showers and Baby Goats: A Blind Woman, Two Wheels and 25,000 MilesVolunteering in West Africa

|summary=Consider In the worldsummer of 2008, this book's author was spending her days working in an office job in the USA while spending her nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else. Long story short, she ended up volunteering in Ghana, West Africa. There might not be enough Now coincidentally, in the summer of 2010, this review's author was spending ''her'' days working in an office job (albeit in the UK) while spending ''her'' nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else, and ''she'' ended up just 3 countries away, volunteering in Sierra Leone, West Africa. So you can see why, when this book came up, said reviewer was delighted to have the opportunity to read and critique it .|isbn=171024299X}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Mourby_Rooms|title=Rooms with a View: The Secret Life of Great Hotels|author=Adrian Mourby|rating=4|genre=Travel|summary=Adrian Mourby has given us a flying visit to go around each of fifty grand hotels, from fourteen regions of the world, with the hotels in some over-crowded placeseach section being arranged chronologically rather than by region, but there is enough variety which helps to give something of an overall picture. So what makes a hotel 'grand'? The first hotel to call itself 'grand' was in Covent Garden in 1774 and it - ushered in the beginning of a period when a hotel would be a lifestyle choice rather than a refuge for those without friends and family conveniently nearby. The hotels we visit all began life in different circumstances and each faced a different set of challenges. We begin in the Americas, move to the United Kingdom, circumnavigate Europe, briefly visit Russia and Turkey then northern Africa, India and us - Asia. Australia, it seems, does not go for us all the grand.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1908745819|title=Surfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie|rating=5|genre=History|summary=Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book, they tell you ''this one has your name on it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the book. That's a rare experience. People who are sensitive to have our own version hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of it; our own perceptionsthe author considering ''an older, experiences and expectationsless tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Those are drastically altered from Add to that my love of the natural world, of those aspects of you the poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and substance most of all, about connection. Of course, this book had my name on it. It was written for me. It would have found its way to me eventually. I if one is blindam pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1912242052|title=O Joy for me!|author=Keir Davidson|rating=3|genre=Art|summary=''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the mountains alone, not because he had to for work, as Cathy Birchall isa miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. But that simple fact did not stop her taking a year outHis rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and starting in August 2008its literary consequences, perch herself on her husbandchanged our view of the world''s pillion seat .}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Woolf_Great|title=The Great Horizon: 50 Tales of Exploration|author=Jo Woolf|rating=3.5|genre=History|summary=Jo Woolf has compiled a brilliant set of fifty short insights into the lives and achievements of some amazingly brave people. Their fearless journeys have helped us unlock many of the mysteries of the wildest parts of our world, and also given us an understanding of what it is like to be taken from one end of faced with the most terrible conditions and still have the earth determination and grit to carry on. This book could be viewed as a taster which encourages us to seek out and read more about some of the other most iconic explorers. Their stories are pretty incredible and back againWoolf does them justice.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Hailstone_Berlin|title=Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966|author=Allan Hailstone|rating=4|amazonukgenre=<amazonuk>0956497586<History|summary=''Berlin in the Cold War: 1959-1966'' contains almost 200 photographs taken by author/amazonuk>photographer Allan Hailstone in his visits to the city during this period. The images provide an insight into the changing nature of the divide between East and West Berlin and a glimpse into life in the city during the Cold War.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joseph MitchellStewart_Marches|title=Up In The Old HotelMarches|author=Rory Stewart

|genre=TravelHistory|summary=One The Observer quote on the front of the joys paperback edition of reviewing books Stewart's latest book observes ''This is when you stumble across somethingtravel writing at its finest.'' Perhaps, know you are going but to love call it, ask for 'travel writing' is to totally under-sell it. This is erudition at its finest. Stewart has the background to do this: he had an international upbringing and followed his father in both the Army and the Foreign Office, have it delivered and then spend (to his father's, bemusement, shall we say) became an MP. Oh, and he walked 6,000 miles across Afghanistan in 2002. A walk along the Scottish borders should be a doddle by comparison.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Bristow China|title=China in Drag: Travels with a week or so being absolutely entrancedCross-dresser|author=Michael Bristow|rating=4|genre=Autobiography|summary=Having worked for nine years in Bejing as a journalist for the BBC, author Michael Bristow decided to write about Chinese history. Having been learning the local language for several years, Bristow asked his language teacher for guidance - the language teacher, born in the early fifties, offered Bristow a compelling picture of life in Communist China - but added to that, Bristow was greatly surprised to find that his language teacher also enjoyed spending his spare time in ladies clothing. It soon becomes clear that the tale told here is immensely personal - yet also paints a fascinating portrait of one of the world's most intriguing nations. }}{{Frontpage|isbn=Hurst_Norfolk|title=On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks|author=John Hurst|rating=4|genre=Art|summary=It was pure serendipity: after a five-hour drive, we were, annoyingly, left with an hour to fill in Blakeney before we could have the keys to our holiday cottage. There was an art exhibition in the church hall, so easily we went in - and found a display of the most gorgeous pictures. I'd cheerfully have bought every one and hung them on our walls, but thought that I would have been to make do with a disappointmentcouple of greetings cards when I saw ''On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks'' and I couldn't resist buying it.}}