Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Travel]] __NOTOC__ <!-- Remove --> <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander McCall SmithAlastair Humphreys|title=A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith's EdinburghLocal

|genre=Travel|summary=It might be simplest if I begin by telling you what Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world. And then written about it. For this book is ''not''he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it. ItAs he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt 's not a book of beautiful photographs (with some supporting text) of the places you'll almost certainly want to visit if you're visiting Edinburgh as share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a touristsmall map. If thatNature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…''s what you want then there are dozens One of such books available all over the city at a fraction joys of the cost book for me was that the biggest thing he learned about all of these things was that there are no easy answers, no single 'right or wrong'A Work of Beauty''. This might , that every upside is likely to have the look of a coffee table book (downside for somebody and it would certainly look impressive that there) but it has a lot more depth and interest than you might expect. This is a book of Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh, the city he walks around every day, constantly seeing something new, something else with a story to tellare some hard choices ahead.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1902419863</amazonuk>1785633678

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela O'Cuneen0957181167|title=Hummingbirds in My HairBlue Skies and Boat Trips: Adventures The Norfolk of a Diplomatic Wife in the CaribbeanBrian Lewis|author=Alan Marshall|rating=45|genre=AutobiographyArt|summary=Pamela O'Cuneen was what is known There are few positive things which can be said about a 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 pictures on the business as a 'diplomatic wife': walls - and was completely taken by the spouse work of a diplomat sent abroad to represent his countryBrian Lewis. It's generally unpaid I searched online and extremely hard work - I've always thought of it as one could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the original BOGOF dealsprint I wanted was ‘not available’. When we first meet Pamela she and her husbandOh, KJ, have been transferred dear - then a few doors down from their beloved Africa to Surinamethe apartment, or ''SuriI found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books -where?'' as people always responded when it was mentioned to them. It ''used'' to be Dutch Guyana on the Caribbean coast of South America and there are few people who would think a framed print of it in terms of a holiday destinationthe picture I wanted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373637</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Engel1785633457|title=Engel's Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England: Thirty-nine counties, one capital and one manby Electric Car|author=Clive Wilkinson

|summary=Matthew Engel Clive Wilkinson has spent some considerable time a history of travelling around by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the thirty nine historic counties idea of exploring the edges of Englandin an electric car was not totally outrageous. On the face of In fact, it this is should be a rather strange task given that some of the counties (anyone remember Middlesex? Cumberland?) no longer exist pleasant holiday for Clive and that they are - or were - situated in a country which you can't reliably find on a drop-down internet menu. Engel's attempts to explain to his eight-year-old son which country we live in produced mixed results. His son grasped the outlines but as he explained the concepts Engels found himself getting more and more confused, particularly when you add in the counties: reorganisation in 1974 changed borderswife, created new counties and abolished some old ones. Some were renamedJoan, to subsequently revert to the old name whilst others faded away unremarked.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685710</amazonuk>shouldn't it?

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David GentlemanMerryn Glover|title=In the CountryThe Hidden Fires

|genre=ArtTravel|summary=I had no intention of reading It is always about the book, not the writer, but there are times when the author''In The Country''. I opened s hinterland is also the background to the book and so it simply is necessary to see what it was likeunderstand that context, but by the time that I shut it again I was nearly halfway through and I had no intention of giving in order to appreciate the book to anyone else. Now Merryn Glover is of Australian parentage, was born in his eighties David Gentleman is well known as watercolouristKathmandu, specialising grew up in landscapesthe Annapurna and Himalayan and now lives in Badenoch in Scotland. He's based I can think of no-one better a combination to give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than the first Writer in London but also has a home Residence in Suffolk the Cairngorms National Park. Merryn walks, not so much in the village shadow of Huntingfield and it's this houseShepherd, but in her spirit. I think the village and the surrounding area which is the location for ''In The Country''two would have gotten along famously.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095715285X</amazonuk>1846975751

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Four FieldsB0B7289HKQ|authortitle=Tim Dee|rating=3.5|genre=Animals and Wildlife|summary=If asked to name, or even think of, four fields, the common man might well struggle, such is the chance of him living in a city. He might not think of the local park as a field, Conversations Across America: A Father and he may turn to the field of the cloth of gold if a historianSon, the field of dreams perhaps, or he might at least have something looking like a football pitch in his mindAlzheimer's eye. Tim Dee, not a nature scientist as such but so in tune with the outside world he really doesn't seem to have stopped indoors but to write this book in the past decade, seems like the sort of person who could hardly name four buildings, but would relish the chance to itemise his favourite fields. He is very doubtful any two in Britain are the same. Like snowflakes, then, they can bear a closer examination to show their full picture – and Dee picks on four, across 300 Conversations Along the world and noted for events across TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the last few thousand years, to focus on. The result is a rich – if at times over-rich – summation Soul of the birdlife above the fields, and everything Dee knows and loves about them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099541378</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Like a Tramp, Like A Pilgrim: On Foot, Across Europe to RomeAmerica|author=Harry BucknallKari Loya

|summary=What links London Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and Rome? the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it. Their capital city status for oneThe decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of courseit - in 2015. One has a St Paul's cathedral, They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the other recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a St Peter's (although pedants will say not). They both have a football team challenge that it would be for most people who wear red and white. Oh, and the ancient pilgrim route called the Via Francigena – although the pedant will again say that that strictly starts at that other pilgrimage site, Canterburyconsidered taking it on. As for Harry Bucknall, the Via starts at St Paul's Merv Loya was 75 years old and should end at St Peterhe was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's. Whether or not Harry himself will connect the two cities – and entirely on foot – is the subject of this travel book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408187248</amazonuk>

Erligg Kagge is a Norwegian explorer who has walked to the South Pole, the North Pole and the summit of Everest. He knows a thing or two about walking. However, 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 few pages long. Perhaps then, better thought of as a meditation rather than an essay.|isbn=0241357705}}{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon RainforestMonica Connell|authortitle=Wade DavisAgainst a Peacock Sky|rating=4.5

|summary=As someone who has always enjoyed learning about the Amazon, and with plans Monica Connell went to travel Nepal to South America next year, this book practically screamed at me do the fieldwork for her Ph.D. in social anthropology. I think it is important to be reviewedknow that. AndShe went on a grant-supported trip, although with a little tough going relatively specific objective. She wasn't a hippy wanderer looking for Shangri-la. She wasn't a mere tourist passing through. She went with a fundamental aim of learning about these people and long-winded in partshow they lived. She also went, presumably, I'm glad I had with the opportunity academic discipline of how to get lost find these things out, how to organise them in Davis' incredible work of non-fiction. Difficult her mind, how to describe "understand" them in terms the context of genreher own paradigms, this book combines history, politics, science, botany and culturehow to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the event. It is delivered through Fortunately, she also went with a biographical account sense of Davis' own travels open-ness and curiosity and as a memoir willingness to Richard Evans Schultesmuck-in, an ethnobotanist well known for his work to break her own rules and travels in to truly connect with the people of the Amazon and Wade Davis' highly regarded mentorvillage where she hauled up.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099592967</amazonuk>1780600429

 {{newreview|title=Last Days of the Bus ClubFrontpage|author=Chris StewartNicolas Bouvier|ratingtitle=4|genre=Humour|summary=I could well have been a near-neighbour of Chris Stewart. Not, of course, near his current primary occupancy, an ecological farmstead just beyond the turning off from the back end of nowhere in the most rural of corners of southern Spain, but back when he lived in the south-east of England, being Genesis' first ever drummer, and building bridges in the North Downs. The fact I learnt the latter from this book shows up several of the features of this warm-hearted 'travelogue' – the fact that Stewart is never shy about portraying family details and history – given a good map and a prevailing wind one could find where he lives and descend on the farm, if one wished; and that while this might be on the travel shelves, the narrative is so fragmented it actually moves a lot more than any of the characters do.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908745436</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lynne Martin|title=Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the WorldJapanese Chronicles|rating=45

|summary=Lynne and Tim Martin had known each other decades ago It never does to start a review of a book with a quote from the blurb, but when we meet them theysometimes it've only been married for a short times unavoidable. There's just one thing though - they're not ready to settle downLe Monde reviewed this book, at some point, despite with the fact that theywords ''re what might be called the old master craftsmen would call a masterpiece.'upper middle aged'It is precisely that. Their roots are A masterpiece in the US - both have adult children there and sense of the Martins have a house in California - but they want to travel and not just craft as well as touriststhe art of writing. They want I'm going to see the world as the locals see it and hesitate to experience what call it's like to live there. Lynne describes them travel writing' because this is as not being wealthymuch a history of Japan, but they decide a mythology-primer for the Japanese culture as it is a personal response to sell their home, invest living and travelling in the money and become 'home-free'country.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00J0CRNKE</amazonuk>1906011044

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Francis RussellStephen Fabes|title=101 Places in Italy : A Private Grand TourSigns of Life|rating=4.5

|summary=Initially I struggled to describe this book. It's not a guide book: was brought up on maps are intended only to give you a rough idea and first-person narratives of tales of where the towns, cities far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and villages are - even major rivers are not showncuriosity. There are no opening times of museums or other details Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the visitor might need guts to simply go out and whilst do it. I also didn's a tremendous help to t inherit the tourist there's a sense throughout the book kind of their being people who are best avoided steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if at all possible. November and February seem to be I had been gifted with the best months for your visit in many casesrequisite 'bottle'. The 101 places youIn order words I'll visit in the book are given no wider importance than m not the works sort of art within themperson who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years. Finally I accepted Fabes did precisely that the subtitle of the book - ''A Private Grand Tour'' was the most appropriate.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908524324</amazonuk>1788161211

 {{newreview|title=Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the WarFrontpage|author=Michael WilliamsRob Baker|ratingtitle=4.5|genre=History|summary=Soon after 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 Toubab Tales: The Joys and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways. By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly Trials of land-based transport to lorries, buses and coaches. Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part Expat Life in the preparation to keep the country moving, keeping industry and the war effort supplied, helping in the evacuation of Dunkirk, or as their press office put it in a pamphlet of 1943, 'tackling the biggest job in transport history'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099557673</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Never Mind the Bullocks: One girl's 10,000 km adventure around India in the worlds cheapest car|author=Vanessa AbleAfrica

|genre=AutobiographyTravel|summary=With a cute little map of India on the front cover and cartoon cars puttering over the page''"Go to Mali, I thought I’d chosen an entertaining yet mind-broadening travelogue" they said. Well I was wrong. Now I’ve read it through"The music is amazing, I don’t even see it on the same shelf as a Lonely Planet" they said. But that’s possibly this book’s novelty and great strength. The travelogue shelf is fair groaning under weighty tomes by Europeans digging into Indian life and culture"And you get ten hours of sunshine every day. " So let me unpack 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 skedaddleI did.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886127</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|title=London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing|author=Travis Elborough|rating=4|genre=History|summary=The concept of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art Rob Baker is not newan ethnomusicologist. Yet one of the most unusual sales of this kind occurred ''A what?'' I hear you cry. Well, an ethnomusicologist studies music in March 1968. It was a time of British economic crisis (where and when have we heard that before) and the ‘I’m Backing Britain’ campaignrelation to culture, and so rather like a time when folklorist studies the concept of heritage was unfashionable oral and the authorities seemed written story traditions relating to attach more value to modernity than to relics of the Regency and the Victorian agea culture.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565765</amazonuk>B089CSNFT7

 {{newreview|title=The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink Frontpage|author=Olivia LaingChristine Brown|rating=4|genretitle=Biography|summary=Coming from a family with an alcoholic background, Olivia Laing became fascinated by the idea of why Bucket Showers 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 Baby Goats: Volunteering in their often overlapping lives and work.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677940</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins|author=Gavin FrancisWest Africa|rating=4.5

|summary=I know two books donIn the summer of 2008, this book't make a genre, but twice s author was spending her days working in recent years I have read autobiographical travelogues of men who felt too much was going on an office job in their lives and their surroundingsthe USA while spending her nights dreaming about being somewhere else, and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold and inhospitable placesdoing something else. One went to the shores of Lake BaikalLong story short, and shared his days huntingshe ended up volunteering in Ghana, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighboursWest Africa. Gavin Francis took himself southNow coincidentally, to in the edge summer of the Antarctic ice2010, to spend a year as a scientific doctor. He wasnthis review's author was spending ''her''t able to be completely as alone as some have been days working in the past – even if he hid himself away an office job (albeit in isolation before the week-long annual changeover of staff was through. Francis ends UK) while spending ''her'' nights dreaming about being somewhere else, doing something else, and ''she'' ended up with a baker's dozen of companionsjust 3 countries away, volunteering in a place where – apart from the iceSierra Leone, sealing things up – only two lockable doors existWest Africa. You might think So you can see why, when this book came up, said reviewer was a large group of people for someone wanting delighted to be alone, but have the very tenuous opportunity to read 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…critique it.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009956596X</amazonuk>171024299X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris MossMourby_Rooms|title=Smoothly From HarrowRooms with a View: A Compendium for the London CommuterThe Secret Life of Great Hotels|author=Adrian Mourby

|genre=AnthologiesTravel|summary=If you want Adrian Mourby has given us a flying visit to get ''behind'' what commuting is really like - not in an academic or a political wayeach of fifty grand hotels, but from fourteen regions of the perspective of having your hand through a strap and wishing that world, with the man next hotels in each section being arranged chronologically rather than by region, which helps to you wasn't ''quite'' so enamoured give something of Brut aftershave - then you need an overall picture. So what makes a travel journalist. Step forward (but mind the gap), Chris Moss, who writes regularly for the hotel 'grand'Daily Telegraph? The first hotel to call itself 'grand' was in Covent Garden in 1774 and has done it ushered in the same beginning of a period when a hotel would be a lifestyle choice rather than a refuge for the ''Guardian'', ''Independent'' those without friends and family conveniently nearby. The hotels we visit all began life in different circumstances and various magazineseach faced a different set of challenges. Most importantlyWe begin in the Americas, he's commuted from Camberwellmove to the United Kingdom, Camdencircumnavigate Europe, Hackneybriefly visit Russia and Turkey then northern Africa, Harrow, Herne Hill, Surbiton India and TootingAsia. PersonallyAustralia, I think he deserves a medalit seems, does not go for the grand.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905131623</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1908745819|title=Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart Surfacing|author=Diccon BewesKathleen Jamie|rating=4.5|genre=TravelHistory|summary=After several years in my position in relation to the Sometimes when people suggest that you read a certain book industry (, they tell you ''this one has your name on the periphery it''. Mostly we take them at their word, or not, but left a bit – and round rarely do we ask them why they thought so unless it turns out that we didn't like the bend book. That's a lot) I am never surprised at what has rare experience. People who are sensitive to hearing a marketbook calling your name, rarely get it wrong. Every niche has either been filledIn this case, or is getting thereI was told why. So when I found in looking into this book that The blurb speaks of the author has written several before nowconsidering ''an older, all extolling the virtues less tethered sense of Switzerland, I was not surprisedherself.'' Older. Less tethered. I was only regretting he hadnThat't chosen s not a cheaper country for us bad description of where I am. Add to likewise fall in that my love with. Stillof the natural world, all power to of those aspects of the author's elbowpoetic and lyrical that are about style not form, as regardless and substance most of any other journalism he has produced from exploring the countryall, here he writes about one lengthy trip around the more popular parts with fresh and new-seeing eyesconnection. Of course, helped by those who really were seeing this book had my name on it . It was written for the first time, a century and a half agome. It would have found its way to me eventually. I am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886097</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1912242052|title=Sea Monsters: The Lore and Legacy of Olaus Magnus's Marine MapO Joy for me!|author=Joseph NiggKeir Davidson|rating=4.53|genre=Popular ScienceArt|summary=A confession. When reading hardbacks I take ''Oh Joy for me!'' gives Coleridge credit for being ''the first person to walk the paper covermountains alone, if there is onenot because he had to for work, off, to keep it pristine. Sometimes there's as a second benefitminer, with [[Longbourn by Jo Baker]] as an example of having an embossed illustration underneathquarryman, shepherd or suchlikepack-horse driver, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. But His rapturous encounters with this book I won't be alone, for the cover folds out into an amazing artworktheir natural beauty, such as has only two extant original copies. It's a coloured replica of a large map of the northern seas and Scandinavia, dating from 1539its literary consequences, and is in a category changed our view of three major artful scientific papers from where the whole world'here be dragons' cliché about maps comes from. Its creator, Olaus Magnus, followed it up years later with a commentary of all the sea creatures he drew on it, but Magnus has waited centuries for this delicious volume to commentate on both together, in such a lovely fashion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782400435</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=Woolf_Great|title=An Armenian SketchbookThe Great Horizon: 50 Tales of Exploration|author=Vasily GrossmanJo Woolf|rating=43.5|genre=TravelHistory|summary=In 1961, noted Soviet man of letters Vasily Grossman went to Armenia, for Jo Woolf has compiled a couple brilliant set of months' research fifty short insights into the lives and fact-finding, while he was working on transforming an Armenian novel achievements of no small length into Russian. (You can't call it translating, as he didn't speak Armenian beyond two words – he really was paid to rewrite it to some extent in his fashionamazingly brave people.) With time spent in Their fearless journeys have helped us unlock many of the mysteries of the capital, Yerevanwildest parts of our world, and in other rural areas, he got also given us an intimate flavour understanding of what it is like to be faced with the country most terrible conditions and its people, still have the determination and this grit to carry on. This book is the resulting piece. It's not really accurate could be viewed as a taster which encourages us to call it a travelogue, for it covers just a patch here, a topic there, and is in no correct order as such – seek out and read more about some of the author calls it a literary memoirmost iconic explorers. What you can call it, however, is a successTheir stories are pretty incredible and Woolf does them justice.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857052357</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tim MooreHailstone_Berlin|title=You Are Awful (But I Like You)Berlin in the Cold War: Travels Through Unloved Britain1959 to 1966|author=Allan Hailstone

|genre=TravelHistory|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 to see if it might feature Leicester, where I live. The opinion seems to be that you can only like Leicester enough to be proud of it if you're not from there originally - and as I grew up on the edge of a village Berlin in the middle of nowhere, it suits me fine. But no Cold War: 1959- despite its problems (thanks, Labour councils) it doesn1966't count. It's not grotty, ugly, run-down and unappreciated enough. It still has some semblance of life, unlike too many towns and cities in Britain where the industry, 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 contains almost 200 photographs taken by author has valiantly journeyed round many of these grot-spots, and found the story of decrepitude only exacerbating.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546930</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Patrick Kingsley|title=How To Be Danish: From Lego photographer Allan Hailstone in his visits to Lundthe city during this period. A Short Introduction to The images provide an insight into the State changing nature of Denmark|rating=4.5|genre=Travel|summary=First, the bad news. This slim volume won't actually tell you how to become divide between East and West Berlin and a Danish person, despite glimpse into life in the title. What it will do, though, is give you a new appreciation for city during the people of Denmark, and quite possibly make you want to jump on the first plane to Copenhagen to savour what is, according to the United Nations, the happiest country in the worldCold War.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721331</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Cees Nooteboom and Laura Watkinson (Translator) Stewart_Marches|title=Roads to Berlin The Marches|author=Rory Stewart

|genre=TravelHistory|summary=The Observer quote on the front of the paperback edition of Stewart's latest book observes 'Whoever controls Berlin controls Germany and whoever controls Germany controls Europe' This is a remark which travel writing at its finest.'' Perhaps, but to call it 'travel writing' is attributed to Lenintotally under-sell it. Until November 1989, This is erudition at its finest. Stewart has the Berlin Wall bisected background to do this: he had an international upbringing and followed his father in both the historic city Army and divided its citizens from each other. Berlin was occupiedthe Foreign Office, militarised and yet its people carried on with their daily lives amongst the ruins. Cees Nooteboomthen (to his father's, a distinguished Dutch travel writerbemusement, knew something of the devastation of the pastshall we say) became an MP. He is old enough to have experiencedOh, and at impressionable agehe walked 6, the Nazi Blitzkreig and occupation of Holland000 miles across Afghanistan in 2002. A sensitive and susceptible person, he meditates upon walk along the various strata of meaning, history, heroism and time itself. The result is Scottish borders should be a prose poem on a unique city that is condemned to be constantly developing, becoming rather than just beingdoddle by comparison.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050265</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon GarfieldBristow China|title=On The MapChina in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser|author=Michael Bristow|rating=54|genre=TravelAutobiography|summary=You might think that there's not Having worked for nine years in Bejing as a lot which could be said journalist for the BBC, author Michael Bristow decided to write about maps - but you'd be completely wrongChinese history. This is staggeringly good Having been learning the local language for several years, Bristow asked his language teacher for guidance - one of the very best non-fiction books I've read all year. Garfield takes us from language teacher, born in the Great Library early fifties, offered Bristow a compelling picture of Alexandria life in Communist China - but added to a map of the brainthat, via maps Bristow was greatly surprised to find that his language teacher also enjoyed spending his spare time in films, treasure maps and JM Barrie's hatred of folding mapsladies clothing. Alternating between full chapters which tell It soon becomes clear that the stories tale told here is immensely personal - yet also paints a fascinating portrait of one of cartographers and their maps in roughly chronological order, and shorter entries bearing the title 'Pocket Map' which pick out particularly interesting trivia, thereworld's not a dull entry in the bookmost intriguing nations. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685095</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Simon ArmitageHurst_Norfolk|title=Walking HomeOn My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks|author=John Hurst

|genre=TravelArt|summary=Poet Simon Armitage decided It was pure serendipity: after a five-hour drive, we were, annoyingly, left with an hour to fill in 2010 Blakeney before we could have the keys to walk our holiday cottage. There was an art exhibition in the Pennine Way 'church hall, so we went in reverse' - instead and found a display of heading to Scotland, hethe most gorgeous pictures. I'd start just across the border cheerfully have bought every one and walk in the direction of his native Yorkshire. As if doing it this wayhung them on our walls, but thought that I would have to make do with the sun, wind a couple of greetings cards when I saw ''On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks'' and rain in his face wasnI couldn't hard enough, he also challenged himself to do resist buying it without a penny to his name, earning cash for the journey by giving poetry readings in pubs, village halls and living rooms. Could he make a 256-mile journey supported only by the kindness of strangers and his own willpower?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571249884</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Cathy Birchall and Bernard Smith|title=Touching The World: A Blind Woman, Two Wheels and 25,000 Miles|rating=4.5|genre=Travel|summary=Consider the world. There might not be enough of it to go around in some over-crowded places, but there is enough variety in it - and us - for us all to have our own version of it; our own perceptions, experiences and expectations. Those are drastically altered from those of you and I if one is blind, as Cathy Birchall is. But that simple fact did not stop her taking a year out, and starting in August 2008, perch herself Move on her husband's pillion seat and be taken from one end of the earth to the other and back again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956497586</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Trivia Reviews]]