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[[Category:New Reviews|Travel]]__NOTOC__ <!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the WarAlastair Humphreys|authortitle=Michael WilliamsLocal|rating=4.5|genre=HistoryTravel |summary=Soon after Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the end of the First World War, the British railways entered what is generally regarded as their golden age, with the heyday of the ‘Big Four’ companies, the LNER (London and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railwaysworld. And then written about it. By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport For this book he walked and cycled very close to lorries, buses home and coachesthen wrote about it. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitableAs he says in his introduction, they played a vital part in the preparation book is an attempt ''to keep the country movingshare what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map. Nature loss, pollution, keeping industry land use and access, agriculture, the war effort suppliedfood system, helping in rewilding…'' One of the evacuation joys of Dunkirk, or as their press office put it in a pamphlet the book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of 1943these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'tackling the biggest job in transport historyright or wrong', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099557673</amazonuk>1785633678

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0957181167|title=Never Mind the BullocksBlue Skies and Boat Trips: One girl's 10,000 km adventure around India in the worlds cheapest carThe Norfolk of Brian Lewis|author=Vanessa AbleAlan Marshall|rating=45|genre=AutobiographyArt|summary=With There are few positive things which can be said about a cute little map substandard apartment when you’re on holiday but this time, in trying to avoid looking at a problem I found myself looking more closely at a couple of India pictures on the front cover walls - and cartoon cars puttering over was completely taken by the page, I thought I’d chosen an entertaining yet mind-broadening traveloguework of Brian Lewis. Well I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the print I wanted was wrong‘not available’. Now I’ve read it throughOh, dear - then a few doors down from the apartment, I don’t even see it on the same shelf as found a gift shop with a Lonely Planet. But that’s possibly this book’s novelty stack of brand new books - and great strength. The travelogue shelf is fair groaning under weighty tomes by Europeans digging into Indian life and culture. So let me unpack a framed print of the delights of this particular book for you, but don’t be misled: you aren’t going to pick up many recommendations for your own odyssey from this round-India skedaddlepicture I wanted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886127</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1785633457|title=London Bridge in AmericaCharging Around: The Tall Story Exploring the Edges of a Transatlantic CrossingEngland by Electric Car|author=Travis ElboroughClive Wilkinson|rating=45|genre=HistoryTravel|summary=The concept Clive Wilkinson has a history of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art is not newtravelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. Yet one As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the most unusual sales edges of this kind occurred England in March 1968an electric car was not totally outrageous. It was In fact, it should be a time of British economic crisis (where pleasant holiday for Clive and when have we heard that before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaignhis wife, Joan, and a time when the concept of heritage was unfashionable and the authorities seemed to attach more value to modernity than to relics of the Regency and the Victorian age.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565765</amazonuk>shouldn't it?

 {{newreview|title=The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink Frontpage|author=Olivia LaingMerryn Glover|ratingtitle=4|genre=Biography|summary=Coming from a family with an alcoholic background, Olivia Laing became fascinated by the idea of why and how some of the greatest works of twentieth-century literature were written by those with a drink problem. The list soon became a long one – Dylan Thomas, Raymond Chandler, Jack London, Jean Rhys, to name but a few, instantly came to mind. In the spring of 2011 she crossed the Atlantic to take a trip across the USA, from New York City and New Orleans to Chicago and Seattle by hired car and train, in the course of which she took a close look at the link between creativity and alcohol which inspired the work of six authors, namely F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. Taking her title from a character in Williams’s play ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ who says he is taking a trip to echo spring, an euphemism for the liquor cabinet, she travels to the places which were pivotal in their often overlapping lives and work.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677940</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins|author=Gavin FrancisHidden Fires

|summary=I know two books donIt is always about the book, not the writer, but there are times when the author't make a genres hinterland is also the background to the book and so it is necessary to understand that context, but twice in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues order to appreciate the book. Merryn Glover is of men who felt too much Australian parentage, was going on born in their lives and their surroundingsKathmandu, grew up in the Annapurna and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold Himalayan and inhospitable placesnow lives in Badenoch in Scotland. One went to the shores I can think of Lake Baikal, and shared his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only no-one better a few very distant neighbours. Gavin Francis took himself south, combination to the edge give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than the Antarctic ice, to spend a year as a scientific doctor. He wasn't able to be completely as alone as some have been first Writer in the past – even if he hid himself away Residence in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was throughCairngorms National Park. Francis ends up with a baker's dozen of companions Merryn walks, not so much in a place where – apart from the iceshadow of Shepherd, sealing things up – only two lockable doors existbut in her spirit. You might I think this was a large group of people for someone wanting to be alone, but the very tenuous and isolated feel of the place in the huge emptiness of the landscape is the main point of this book – that, and communing with emperor penguins…two would have gotten along famously.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009956596X</amazonuk>1846975751

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris MossB0B7289HKQ|title=Smoothly From HarrowConversations Across America: A Compendium for Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the London CommuterSoul of America|author=Kari Loya

|genre=AnthologiesTravel|summary=If you want to get ''behind'' what commuting is really like - not in an academic or a political wayKari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, but from by the perspective of having your hand through a strap way) wanted to spend some time with his father and wishing that the man next period between two jobs seemed like a good time to you wasn't ''quite'' so enamoured of Brut aftershave - then you need a travel journalistdo it. Step forward (but mind The decision was made to ride the gap)Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Chris MossVirginia to Astoria, who writes regularly for Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the ''Daily Telegraph'' and has done the same recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for the ''Guardian'', ''Independent'' and various magazinesmost people who considered taking it on. Most importantly, Merv Loya was 75 years old and hewas suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's commuted from Camberwell, Camden, Hackney, Harrow, Herne Hill, Surbiton and Tooting. Personally, I think he deserves a medal.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905131623</amazonuk>

{{newreview|title=Slow Train Erligg Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who has walked to Switzerland: One Tourthe South Pole, Two Tripsthe North Pole and the summit of Everest. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, 150 Years this isn't a travelogue about any of those epic journeys, it is instead a thoughtful exploration of what it means to walk. It is a plenitude of unnumbered essays about walking. There is no 'contents' page and I haven't counted. In small format paperback, each essay is only a World few pages long. Perhaps then, better thought of Change Apart as a meditation rather than an essay.|isbn=0241357705}}{{Frontpage|author=Diccon BewesMonica Connell|title=Against a Peacock Sky|rating=4.5

|summary=After several years Monica Connell went to Nepal to do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in my position in relation social anthropology. I think it is important to the book industry (know that. She went on the periphery but left a bit – and round the bend grant-supported trip, with a relatively specific objective. She wasn't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-la. She wasn't a lot) I am never surprised at what has mere tourist passing through. She went with a marketfundamental aim of learning about these people and how they lived. Every niche has either been filledShe also went, or is getting there. So when I found in looking into this book that the author has written several before nowpresumably, all extolling with the virtues academic discipline of Switzerlandhow to find these things out, I was not surprised. I was only regretting he hadn't chosen a cheaper country for us how to likewise fall organise them in love with. Stillher mind, all power how to "understand" them in the author's elbowcontext of her own paradigms, as regardless and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of any other journalism he has produced from exploring the countryexperience after the event. Fortunately, here he writes about one lengthy trip around the more popular parts she also went with fresh a sense of open-ness and newcuriosity and a willingness to muck-seeing eyesin, helped by those who really were seeing it for to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the first time, a century and a half agovillage where she hauled up. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1857886097</amazonuk>1780600429

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sea Monsters: The Lore and Legacy of Olaus Magnus's Marine MapNicolas Bouvier|authortitle=Joseph NiggThe Japanese Chronicles|rating=4.5|genre=Popular ScienceTravel|summary=A confession. When reading hardbacks I take It never does to start a review of a book with a quote from the paper coverblurb, if there is one, off, to keep but sometimes it pristine. Sometimes there's a second benefitunavoidable. Le Monde reviewed this book, with [[Longbourn by Jo Baker]] as an example of having an embossed illustration underneathat some point, or suchlike. But with this book I wonthe words ''t be alone, for what the cover folds out into an amazing artwork, such as has only two extant original copiesold master craftsmen would call a masterpiece. '' It's a coloured replica of a large map of the northern seas and Scandinavia, dating from 1539, and is precisely that. A masterpiece in a category the sense of three major artful scientific papers from where the whole craft as well as the art of writing. I'm going to hesitate to call it 'here be dragonstravel writing' cliché about maps comes from. Its creator, Olaus Magnusbecause this is as much a history of Japan, followed it up years later with a commentary of all mythology-primer for the sea creatures he drew on Japanese culture as it, but Magnus has waited centuries for this delicious volume is a personal response to commentate on both together, living and travelling in such a lovely fashionthe country.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782400435</amazonuk>1906011044

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=An Armenian SketchbookStephen Fabes|authortitle=Vasily GrossmanSigns of Life|rating=45

|summary=In 1961, noted Soviet man I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of letters Vasily Grossman went to Armenia, for a couple tales of months' research far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and fact-finding, while he was working on transforming an Armenian novel of no small length into Russiancuriosity. (You can't call it translatingUnfortunately, as he I didn't speak Armenian beyond two words – he really inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was paid the guts to rewrite simply go out and do it to some extent in his fashion.) With time spent in I also didn't inherit the capital, Yerevan, and in other rural areas, he got an intimate flavour kind of the country and its peoplesteady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and this book is basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the resulting piecerequisite 'bottle'. ItIn order words I's m not really accurate to call it a travelogue, for it covers just the sort of person who will get on a patch here, bike outside a topic there, London hospital and is in no correct order as such – and the author calls it a literary memoirnot come home for six years. What you can call it, however, is a successFabes did precisely that.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857052357</amazonuk>1788161211

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tim MooreRob Baker|title=You Are Awful (But I Like You)Toubab Tales: Travels Through Unloved BritainThe Joys and Trials of Expat Life in Africa

|summary=This is not the first book I've read about the scummy, unloved corners of our country, and I approached it in just the same way I did with the last - I looked '"Go to see if it might feature LeicesterMali, where I live" they said. "The opinion seems to be that music is amazing," they said. "And you can only like Leicester enough to be proud get ten hours of it if you're not from there originally - and as sunshine every day." So I grew up on the edge of a village in the middle of nowhere, it suits me finedid. But no - despite its problems (thanks, Labour councils) it doesn't count' Rob Baker is an ethnomusicologist. It's not grotty, ugly, run-down and unappreciated enough'A what?'' I hear you cry. It still has some semblance of lifeWell, unlike too many towns and cities an ethnomusicologist studies music in Britain where the industryrelation to culture, so rather like a folklorist studies the jobs, the life and the 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, oral and found the written story of decrepitude only exacerbatingtraditions relating to a culture.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099546930</amazonuk>B089CSNFT7

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick KingsleyChristine Brown|title=How To Be DanishBucket Showers and Baby Goats: From Lego to Lund. A Short Introduction to the State of DenmarkVolunteering in West Africa

|summary=FirstIn the summer of 2008, this book's author was spending her days working in an office job in the bad newsUSA while spending her nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else. This slim volume wonLong story short, she ended up volunteering in Ghana, West Africa. Now coincidentally, in the summer of 2010, this review's author was spending 't actually tell '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 how can see why, when this book came up, said reviewer was delighted to have the opportunity to become 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 Danish personflying visit to each of fifty grand hotels, despite from fourteen regions of the title. What it will doworld, thoughwith the hotels in each section being arranged chronologically rather than by region, is which helps to give you something of an overall picture. So what makes a new appreciation for hotel 'grand'? The first hotel to call itself 'grand' was in Covent Garden in 1774 and it ushered in the people beginning of Denmark, 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 quite possibly make you want to jump on each faced a different set of challenges. We begin in the first plane to Copenhagen to savour what isAmericas, according move to the United NationsKingdom, circumnavigate Europe, briefly visit Russia and Turkey then northern Africa, India and Asia. Australia, it seems, does not go for the happiest country in the worldgrand.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721331</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cees Nooteboom and Laura Watkinson (Translator) 1908745819|title=Roads to Berlin Surfacing|author=Kathleen Jamie

|genre=TravelHistory|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'Whoever controls Berlin controls Germany and whoever controls Germany controls Europet like the book. That' is s a remark which is attributed rare experience. People who are sensitive to Leninhearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. Until November 1989In this case, I was told why. The blurb speaks of the author considering ''an older, less tethered sense of herself.'' Older. Less tethered. That's not a bad description of where I am. Add to that my love of the Berlin Wall bisected natural world, of those aspects of the historic city poetic and lyrical that are about style not form, and divided 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 citizens from each otherway to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly. Berlin was occupied}}{{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 a miner, quarryman, shepherd or pack-horse driver, militarised but because he wanted to for pleasure and yet its people carried on adventure. His rapturous encounters with their daily lives amongst natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the ruinsworld''.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Woolf_Great|title=The Great Horizon: 50 Tales of Exploration|author=Jo Woolf|rating=3. Cees Nooteboom, 5|genre=History|summary=Jo Woolf has compiled a distinguished Dutch travel writer, knew something brilliant set of fifty short insights into the devastation lives and achievements of the pastsome amazingly brave people. He is old enough to Their fearless journeys have experienced, and at impressionable age, helped us unlock many of the Nazi Blitzkreig and occupation mysteries of Holland. A sensitive and susceptible person, he meditates upon the various strata wildest parts of meaning, historyour world, heroism and time itself. The result also given us an understanding of what it is a prose poem like to be faced with the most terrible conditions and still have the determination and grit to carry on . This book could be viewed as a unique city that is condemned taster which encourages us to be constantly developing, becoming rather than just beingseek out and read more about some of the most iconic explorers. Their stories are pretty incredible and Woolf does them justice.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=Hailstone_Berlin|amazonuktitle=<amazonuk>0857050265<Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966|author=Allan Hailstone|rating=4|genre=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=Simon GarfieldStewart_Marches|title=On The MapMarches|author=Rory Stewart

|genre=TravelHistory|summary=You might think that thereThe Observer quote on the front of the paperback edition of Stewart's not a lot which could be said about maps - latest book observes ''This is travel writing at its finest.'' Perhaps, but youto call it 'travel writing'd be completely wrongis to totally under-sell it. This is staggeringly good - one of the very best non-fiction books I've read all yearerudition at its finest. Garfield takes us from Stewart has the Great Library of Alexandria background to a map of do this: he had an international upbringing and followed his father in both the Army and the brain, via maps in filmsForeign Office, treasure maps and JM Barriethen (to his father's hatred of folding maps, bemusement, shall we say) became an MP. Alternating between full chapters which tell the stories of cartographers and their maps in roughly chronological orderOh, and shorter entries bearing the title 'Pocket Map' which pick out particularly interesting triviahe walked 6, there's not a dull entry 000 miles across Afghanistan in 2002. A walk along the bookScottish borders should be a doddle by comparison. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685095</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon ArmitageBristow China|title=Walking HomeChina in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser|author=Michael Bristow

|genre=TravelAutobiography|summary=Poet Simon Armitage Having worked for nine years in Bejing as a journalist for the BBC, author Michael Bristow decided in 2010 to walk write about Chinese history. Having been learning the Pennine Way 'in reverse' local language for several years, Bristow asked his language teacher for guidance - instead of heading to Scotlandthe language teacher, he'd start just across the border and walk born in the direction early fifties, offered Bristow a compelling picture of his native Yorkshire. As if doing it this waylife in Communist China - but added to that, with the sun, wind and rain in Bristow was greatly surprised to find that his face wasn't hard enough, he language teacher also challenged himself to do it without a penny to enjoyed spending his name, earning cash for the journey by giving poetry readings spare time in pubs, village halls and living roomsladies clothing. Could he make It soon becomes clear that the tale told here is immensely personal - yet also paints a 256-mile journey supported only by fascinating portrait of one of the kindness of strangers and his own willpower?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571249884</amazonuk>world's most intriguing nations.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cathy Birchall and Bernard SmithHurst_Norfolk|title=Touching The WorldOn My Way: A Blind Woman, Two Wheels and 25,000 MilesNorfolk Coastal Walks|author=John Hurst|rating=4.5|genre=TravelArt|summary=Consider 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 worldkeys to our holiday cottage. There might not be enough of it to go around was an art exhibition in some over-crowded placesthe church hall, but there is enough variety so we went in it - and us - for us all to have our own version found a display of it; our own perceptions, experiences and expectationsthe most gorgeous pictures. Those are drastically altered from those of you and I if 'd cheerfully have bought every one is blindand hung them on our walls, as Cathy Birchall is. But but thought that simple fact did not stop her taking I would have to make do with a year out, couple of greetings cards when I saw ''On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks'' and starting in August 2008, perch herself on her husbandI couldn's pillion seat and be taken from one end of the earth to the other and back againt resist buying it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956497586</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Joseph Mitchell|title=Up In The Old Hotel|rating=5|genre=Travel|summary=One of the joys of reviewing books is when you stumble across something, know you are going Move on to love it, ask for it, have it delivered and then spend a week or so being absolutely entranced. It could so easily have been a disappointment. Joseph Mitchell is one of those men, one feels one should have heard of, should know about. Not just that, he is one of those, one wishes one could have known.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956159X</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Trivia Reviews]]