Difference between revisions of "Newest Travel Reviews"

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{{Frontpage
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|author=David Greene
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|author=Alastair Humphreys
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|title=Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia
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|title=Local
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|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
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|genre=Politics and Society
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|genre=Travel
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|summary=It's no mistake that the cover of my edition of this book is a photo where the Trans-Siberian Railway is horizontal in the frame.  It's well known for going east-west, left to right across the map of the largest country by far in the world.  9,288 kilometres from Moscow to the eastern stretches of Russia, it could only be a long, thin line across the cover, as it is in our imagination of it as a form of transport and a travel destination in its own right.  So when this book mentions it as the spine or backbone of Russia a couple of times, that's got to be of a prone Russia – one lying down, not upright or active.  David Greene, a stalwart of northern American radio journalism, uses this book to see just how active or otherwise Russia and Russians are – and finds their lying down to be quite a definite verdict, as well as a slight indictment.  It's no mistake either for this cover to have people in the frame alongside the train carriages, for the people met both riding and living alongside the tracks of the Railway are definitely the ribs of the piece.
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|summary= Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world.  And then written about it.  For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it.  As he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt ''to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map.  Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding…''  One of the joys of the 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', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846883709</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1785633678
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Horatio Clare
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|isbn=0957181167
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|title=Down to the Sea in Ships
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|title=Blue Skies and Boat Trips: The Norfolk of Brian Lewis
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|rating=4
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|author=Alan Marshall
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|genre=Travel
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|rating=5
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|summary=Inspired by a chance read of ''Moby Dick'', the aptly named Horatio Clare applies to be a writer in residence for a shipping company. They accept, and he travels with them on two voyages - one from Felixstowe to Los Angeles, and the other from Antwerp to Montreal.
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|genre=Art
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526298</amazonuk>
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|summary=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 walls - and was completely taken by the work of Brian Lewis.  I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the print I wanted was ‘not available’. Oh, dear - then a few doors down from the apartment, I found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books - and a framed print of the picture I wanted.
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Mike McIntyre and Chris Brinkley (narrator)
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|isbn=1785633457
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|title=The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America
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|title=Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car
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|rating=4.5
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|author=Clive Wilkinson
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
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|summary=In 1994 Mike McIntyre was a thirty-seven-year-old journalist with a secret: he was frightened. There were specific fears, but what it boiled down to was that he was frightened of life - and then there was a memory.  He remembered - with some shame - not stopping for a hitchhiker with a gas can in the desert.  It was almost on a whim that he decided to cross America, from San Francisco in California to Cape Fear in North Carolina, which might sound like a great adventure, but McIntyre decides to do it without money - to be completely reliant on the kindness of strangers.  He was confronting his own fears.
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|summary=Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it?
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00PWMVWTY</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|author=Merryn Glover
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|author=Alexander McCall Smith
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|title=The Hidden Fires
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|title=A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith's Edinburgh
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
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|summary=It might be simplest if I begin by telling you what this book is ''not''.  It'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 a tourist.  If that's what you want then there are dozens of such books available all over the city at a fraction of the cost of ''A Work of Beauty''.  This might have the look of a coffee table book (and it would certainly look impressive 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 tell.
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|summary= It is always about the book, not the writer, but there are times when the author's hinterland is also the background to the book and so it is necessary to understand that context, in order to appreciate the book.  Merryn Glover is of Australian parentage, was born in Kathmandu, grew up in the Annapurna and Himalayan and now lives in Badenoch in Scotland.  I can think of no-one better a combination to give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than the first Writer in Residence in the Cairngorms National Park.  Merryn walks, not so much in the shadow of Shepherd, but in her spirit.  I think the two would have gotten along famously.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1902419863</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1846975751
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|isbn=B0B7289HKQ
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|author=Pamela O'Cuneen
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|title=Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America
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|title=Hummingbirds in My Hair: Adventures of a Diplomatic Wife in the Caribbean
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|author=Kari Loya
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
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|genre=Autobiography
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|genre=Travel
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|summary=Pamela O'Cuneen was what is known in the business as a 'diplomatic wife': the spouse of a diplomat sent abroad to represent his country.  It's generally unpaid and extremely hard work - I've always thought of it as one of the original BOGOF deals.  When we first meet Pamela she and her husband, KJ, have been transferred from their beloved Africa to Suriname, or ''Suri-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 of it in terms of a holiday destination.
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|summary=Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it.  The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015.  They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it on.  Merv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373637</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Erling Kagge
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|title=Walking: One Step At A Time
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|rating=5
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|genre= Lifestyle
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|summary= Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved a book is evidenced by the number of pages with corners turned, so let me start this one with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not mine. In my defence, I will say that as a reader of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why).
  
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{{newreview
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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.
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|author=Matthew Engel
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|isbn=0241357705
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|title=Engel's England: Thirty-nine counties, one capital and one man
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Monica Connell
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|title=Against a Peacock Sky
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
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|summary=Matthew Engel has spent some considerable time travelling around the thirty nine historic counties of England. On the face of it this is a rather strange task given that some of the counties (anyone remember Middlesex? Cumberland?) no longer exist 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 borders, created new counties and abolished some old ones. Some were renamed, to subsequently revert to the old name whilst others faded away unremarked.
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|summary= Monica 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, with a 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 how they lived. She also went, presumably, with the academic discipline of how to find these things out, how to organise them in her mind, how to "understand" them in the context of her own paradigms, and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the event. Fortunately, she also went with a sense of open-ness and curiosity and a willingness to muck-in, to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled up.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685710</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1780600429
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|author=Nicolas Bouvier
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|author=David Gentleman
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|title=The Japanese Chronicles
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|title=In the Country
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
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|genre=Art
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|genre=Travel
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|summary=I had no intention of reading ''In The Country''. I opened it simply to see what it was like, but by the time that I shut it again I was nearly halfway through and I had no intention of giving the book to anyone else.  Now in his eighties David Gentleman is well known as watercolourist, specialising in landscapes. He's based in London but also has a home in Suffolk in the village of Huntingfield and it's this house, the village and the surrounding area which is the location for ''In The Country''.
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|summary= It never does to start a review of a book with a quote from the blurb, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Le Monde reviewed this book, at some point, with the words ''what the old master craftsmen would call a masterpiece.'' It is precisely that. A masterpiece in the sense of the craft as well as the art of writing. I'm going to hesitate to call it 'travel writing' because this is as much a history of Japan, a mythology-primer for the Japanese culture as it is a personal response to living and travelling in the country.  
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095715285X</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1906011044
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|author=Stephen Fabes
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|title=Four Fields
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|title=Signs of Life
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|author=Tim Dee
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|rating=5
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|rating=3.5
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|genre=Travel
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|genre=Animals and Wildlife
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|summary= I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity.  Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to simply go out and do it.  I also didn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'.  In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years.  Fabes did precisely that.
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|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, and he may turn to the field of the cloth of gold if a historian, the field of dreams perhaps, or he might at least have something looking like a football pitch in his mind'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 the world and noted for events across the last few thousand years, to focus on.  The result is a rich – if at times over-rich – summation of the birdlife above the fields, and everything Dee knows and loves about them.
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|isbn=1788161211
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099541378</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|author=Rob Baker
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|title=Like a Tramp, Like A Pilgrim: On Foot, Across Europe to Rome
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|title=Toubab Tales: The Joys and Trials of Expat Life in Africa
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|author=Harry Bucknall
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
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|summary=What links London and Rome?  Their capital city status for one, of course. One has a St Paul's cathedral, the other a St Peter's (although pedants will say not). They both have a football team 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, Canterbury.  As for Harry Bucknall, the Via starts at St Paul's and should end at St Peter's.  Whether or not Harry himself will connect the two cities – and entirely on foot – is the subject of this travel book.
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|summary=''"Go to Mali," they said. "The music is amazing," they said. "And you get ten hours of sunshine every day." So I did.''
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408187248</amazonuk>
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Rob Baker is an ethnomusicologist. ''A what?'' I hear you cry. Well, an ethnomusicologist studies music in relation to culture, so rather like a folklorist studies the oral and written story traditions relating to a culture.
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|isbn=B089CSNFT7
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|author=Christine Brown
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|title=One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon Rainforest
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|title=Bucket Showers and Baby Goats: Volunteering in West Africa
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|author=Wade Davis
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
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|summary=As someone who has always enjoyed learning about the Amazon, and with plans to travel to South America next year, this book practically screamed at me to be reviewed. And, although a little tough going and long-winded in parts, I'm glad I had the opportunity to get lost in Davis' incredible work of non-fiction. Difficult to describe in terms of genre, this book combines history, politics, science, botany and culture. It is delivered through a biographical account of Davis' own travels and as a memoir to Richard Evans Schultes, an ethnobotanist well known for his work and travels in the Amazon and Wade Davis' highly regarded mentor.
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|summary=In the summer 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. 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.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592967</amazonuk>
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|isbn=171024299X
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{{newreview
 
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|title=Last Days of the Bus Club
 
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|author=Chris Stewart
 
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|rating=4
 
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|genre=Humour
 
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|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.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908745436</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|isbn=Mourby_Rooms
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|author=Lynne Martin
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|title=Rooms with a View: The Secret Life of Great Hotels
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|title=Home Sweet Anywhere: How We Sold Our House, Created a New Life, and Saw the World
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|author=Adrian Mourby
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Travel
 
|genre=Travel
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|summary=Lynne and Tim Martin had known each other decades ago but when we meet them they've only been married for a short time.  There's just one thing though - they're not ready to settle down, despite the fact that they're what might be called 'upper middle aged'. Their roots are in the US - both have adult children there and the Martins have a house in California - but they want to travel and not just as tourists. They want to see the world as the locals see it and to experience what it's like to live there. Lynne describes them as not being wealthy, but they decide to sell their home, invest the money and become 'home-free'.
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|summary=Adrian Mourby has given us a flying visit to each of fifty grand hotels, from fourteen regions of the world, with the hotels in each section being arranged chronologically rather than by region, 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 Asia. Australia, it seems, does not go for the grand.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00J0CRNKE</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Francis Russell
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|isbn=1908745819
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|title=101 Places in Italy : A Private Grand Tour
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|title=Surfacing
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|rating=4.5
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|author=Kathleen Jamie
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|genre=Travel
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|rating=5
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|summary=Initially I struggled to describe this book.  It's not a guide book: maps are intended only to give you a rough idea of where the towns, cities and villages are - even major rivers are not shown.  There are no opening times of museums or other details which the visitor might need and whilst it's a tremendous help to the tourist there's a sense throughout the book of their being people who are best avoided if at all possible.  November and February seem to be the best months for your visit in many cases.  The 101 places you'll visit in the book are given no wider importance than the works of art within them.  Finally I accepted that the subtitle of the book - ''A Private Grand Tour'' was the most appropriate.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908524324</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
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|title=Steaming to Victory: How Britain's Railways Won the War
 
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|author=Michael Williams
 
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|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
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|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 and North Eastern), LMS (London, Midlands and Scottish), GWR (Great Western) and Southern Railways.  By 1939 they were beginning to lose their virtual monopoly of land-based transport to lorries, buses and coaches.  Nevertheless, as war became increasingly inevitable, they played a vital part 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'.
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|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 hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In 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 natural world, of those aspects of 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 am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099557673</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|isbn=1912242052
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|title=Never Mind the Bullocks: One girl's 10,000 km adventure around India in the worlds cheapest car
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|title=O Joy for me!
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|author=Vanessa Able
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|author=Keir Davidson
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|rating=4
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|rating=3
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|genre=Autobiography
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|genre=Art
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|summary=With a cute little map of India on the front cover and cartoon cars puttering over the page, I thought I’d chosen an entertaining yet mind-broadening travelogue.  Well I was wrong.  Now I’ve read it through, I don’t even see it on the same shelf as a Lonely Planet.  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. 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 skedaddle.
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|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, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure.  His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world''.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886127</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|isbn=Woolf_Great
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|title=London Bridge in America: The Tall Story of a Transatlantic Crossing
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|title=The Great Horizon: 50 Tales of Exploration
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|author=Travis Elborough
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|author=Jo Woolf
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|rating=4
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|rating=3.5
 
|genre=History
 
|genre=History
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|summary=The concept of people from overseas countries buying and owning old and long-established British industries and works of art is not new. Yet one of the most unusual sales of this kind occurred 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’ campaign, 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.
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|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 faced with the most terrible conditions and still have the 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 most iconic explorers. Their stories are pretty incredible and Woolf does them justice.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565765</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|isbn=Hailstone_Berlin
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|title=The Trip to Echo Spring: Why Writers Drink
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|title=Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966
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|author=Olivia Laing
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|author=Allan Hailstone
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
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|genre=Biography
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|genre=History
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|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.
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|summary=''Berlin in the Cold War: 1959-1966'' contains almost 200 photographs taken by author/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.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847677940</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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{{newreview
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|isbn=Stewart_Marches
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|title=Empire Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins
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|title=The Marches
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|author=Gavin Francis
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|author=Rory Stewart
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
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|genre=Travel
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|genre=History
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|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 and their surroundings, and took themselves off to remote, isolated, extremely cold and inhospitable places.  One went to the shores of Lake Baikal, and shared his days hunting, fishing, drinking and reading with only a few very distant neighbours.  Gavin Francis took himself south, to the edge of the Antarctic ice, to spend a year as a scientific doctor.  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 companions, in a place where – apart from the ice, sealing things up – only two lockable doors exist. You might 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…
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|summary=The Observer quote on the front of the paperback edition of Stewart's latest book observes ''This is travel writing at its finest.'' Perhaps, but to call it '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, and then (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.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009956596X</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=Bristow China
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|author=Chris Moss
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|title=China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser
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|title=Smoothly From Harrow: A Compendium for the London Commuter
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|author=Michael Bristow
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
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|genre=Anthologies
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|genre=Autobiography
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|summary=If you want to get ''behind'' what commuting is really like - not in an academic or a political way, but from the perspective of having your hand through a strap and wishing that the man next to you wasn't ''quite'' so enamoured of Brut aftershave - then you need a travel journalist.  Step forward (but mind the gap), Chris Moss, who writes regularly for the ''Daily Telegraph'' and has done the same for the ''Guardian'', ''Independent'' and various magazines.  Most importantly, he's commuted from Camberwell, Camden, Hackney, Harrow, Herne Hill, Surbiton and Tooting.  Personally, I think he deserves a medal.
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|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.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905131623</amazonuk>
 
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|title=Slow Train to Switzerland: One Tour, Two Trips, 150 Years and a World of Change Apart
 
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|author=Diccon Bewes
 
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|rating=4.5
 
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|genre=Travel
 
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|summary=After several years in my position in relation to the book industry (on the periphery but left a bit – and round the bend a lot) I am never surprised at what has a market. Every niche has either been filled, or is getting there. So when I found in looking into this book that the author has written several before now, all extolling the virtues of Switzerland, I was not surprised. I was only regretting he hadn't chosen a cheaper country for us to likewise fall in love with. Still, all power to the author'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 it for the first time, a century and a half ago.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1857886097</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
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|title=Sea Monsters: The Lore and Legacy of Olaus Magnus's Marine Map
 
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|author=Joseph Nigg
 
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|rating=4.5
 
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|genre=Popular Science
 
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|summary=A confession.  When reading hardbacks I take the paper cover, if there is one, off, to keep it pristine.  Sometimes there's a second benefit, with [[Longbourn by Jo Baker]] as an example of having an embossed illustration underneath, or suchlike.  But with this book I won't be alone, for the cover folds out into an amazing artwork, 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 1539, and is in a category of three major artful scientific papers from where the whole '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.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782400435</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
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|title=An Armenian Sketchbook
 
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|author=Vasily Grossman
 
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|rating=4
 
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|genre=Travel
 
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|summary=In 1961, noted Soviet man of letters Vasily Grossman went to Armenia, for a couple of months' research 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 two words – he really was paid to rewrite it to some extent in his fashion.)  With time spent in the capital, Yerevan, and in other rural areas, he got an intimate flavour of the country and its people, and this book is the resulting piece.  It's not really accurate to call it a travelogue, for it covers just a patch here, a topic there, and is in no correct order as such – and the author calls it a literary memoir. What you can call it, however, is a success.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857052357</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=Hurst_Norfolk
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|author=Tim Moore
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|title=On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks
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|title=You Are Awful (But I Like You): Travels Through Unloved Britain
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|author=John Hurst
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
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|genre=Travel
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|genre=Art
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|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 in the middle of nowhere, it suits me fine.  But no - despite its problems (thanks, Labour councils) it doesn'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 author has valiantly journeyed round many of these grot-spots, and found the story of decrepitude only exacerbating.
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|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 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 to make do with a couple of greetings cards when I saw ''On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks'' and I couldn't resist buying it.
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546930</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
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|author=Patrick Kingsley
 
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|title=How To Be Danish: From Lego to Lund. A Short Introduction to the State of Denmark
 
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|rating=4.5
 
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|genre=Travel
 
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|summary=First, the bad news. This slim volume won't actually tell you how to become a Danish person, despite the title. What it will do, though, is give you a new appreciation for 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 world.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721331</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
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|author=Cees Nooteboom and Laura Watkinson (Translator)
 
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|title=Roads to Berlin
 
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|rating=5
 
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|genre=Travel
 
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|summary='Whoever controls Berlin controls Germany and whoever controls Germany controls Europe' is a remark which is attributed to Lenin. Until November 1989, the Berlin Wall bisected the historic city and divided its citizens from each other. Berlin was occupied, militarised and yet its people carried on with their daily lives amongst the ruins. Cees Nooteboom, a distinguished Dutch travel writer, knew something of the devastation of the past. He is old enough to have experienced, and at impressionable age, the Nazi Blitzkreig and occupation of Holland. A sensitive and susceptible person, he meditates upon the various strata of meaning, history, heroism and time itself. The result is a prose poem on a unique city that is condemned to be constantly developing, becoming rather than just being.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050265</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
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|author=Simon Garfield
 
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|title=On The Map
 
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|rating=5
 
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|genre=Travel
 
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|summary=You might think that there's not a lot which could be said about maps - but you'd be completely wrong. This is staggeringly good - one of the very best non-fiction books I've read all year. Garfield takes us from the Great Library of Alexandria to a map of the brain, via maps in films, treasure maps and JM Barrie's hatred of folding maps. Alternating between full chapters which tell the stories of cartographers and their maps in roughly chronological order, and shorter entries bearing the title 'Pocket Map' which pick out particularly interesting trivia, there's not a dull entry in the book.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685095</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
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|author=Simon Armitage
 
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|title=Walking Home
 
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|rating=4
 
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|genre=Travel
 
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|summary=Poet Simon Armitage decided in 2010 to walk the Pennine Way 'in reverse' - instead of heading to Scotland, he'd start just across the border and walk in the direction of his native Yorkshire. As if doing it this way, with the sun, wind and rain in his face wasn't hard enough, he also challenged himself to do 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?
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571249884</amazonuk>
 
 
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|author=Cathy Birchall and Bernard Smith
 
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|title=Touching The World: A Blind Woman, Two Wheels and 25,000 Miles
 
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|rating=4.5
 
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|genre=Travel
 
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|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 on her husband's pillion seat and be taken from one end of the earth to the other and back again.
 
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|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956497586</amazonuk>
 
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Latest revision as of 11:59, 26 December 2023

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Review of

Local by Alastair Humphreys

5star.jpg Travel

Alastair Humphreys has walked and cycled all over the world. And then written about it. For this book he walked and cycled very close to home and then wrote about it. As he says in his introduction, the book is an attempt to share what I have learnt about some big issues from a year exploring a small map. Nature loss, pollution, land use and access, agriculture, the food system, rewilding… One of the joys of the 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', that every upside is likely to have a downside for somebody and that there are some hard choices ahead. Full Review

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Review of

Blue Skies and Boat Trips: The Norfolk of Brian Lewis by Alan Marshall

5star.jpg Art

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 walls - and was completely taken by the work of Brian Lewis. I searched online and could only find ‘used’ versions of this book and the print I wanted was ‘not available’. Oh, dear - then a few doors down from the apartment, I found a gift shop with a stack of brand new books - and a framed print of the picture I wanted. Full Review

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Review of

Charging Around: Exploring the Edges of England by Electric Car by Clive Wilkinson

5star.jpg Travel

Clive Wilkinson has a history of travelling by unconventional means with a preference for slow travel. As he neared his eightieth birthday the idea of exploring the edges of England in an electric car was not totally outrageous. In fact, it should be a pleasant holiday for Clive and his wife, Joan, shouldn't it? Full Review

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Review of

The Hidden Fires by Merryn Glover

5star.jpg Travel

It is always about the book, not the writer, but there are times when the author's hinterland is also the background to the book and so it is necessary to understand that context, in order to appreciate the book. Merryn Glover is of Australian parentage, was born in Kathmandu, grew up in the Annapurna and Himalayan and now lives in Badenoch in Scotland. I can think of no-one better a combination to give us a re-appraisal of Nan Shepherds work than the first Writer in Residence in the Cairngorms National Park. Merryn walks, not so much in the shadow of Shepherd, but in her spirit. I think the two would have gotten along famously. Full Review

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Review of

Conversations Across America: A Father and Son, Alzheimer's, and 300 Conversations Along the TransAmerica Bike Trail that Capture the Soul of America by Kari Loya

4star.jpg Travel

Kari (that rhymes with ‘sorry’, by the way) wanted to spend some time with his father and the period between two jobs seemed like a good time to do it. The decision was made to ride the Trans America Bike Trail from Yorktown, Virginia to Astoria, Oregon - all 4250 miles of it - in 2015. They had 73 days to do it - slightly less than the recommended time - but there were factors which pointed this up as more of a challenge that it would be for most people who considered taking it on. Merv Loya was 75 years old and he was suffering from early-stage Alzheimer's. Full Review

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Review of

Walking: One Step At A Time by Erling Kagge

5star.jpg Lifestyle

Those who have read my reviews before will know that how much I loved a book is evidenced by the number of pages with corners turned, so let me start this one with an apology to the Norfolk Library Service: sorry! I forgot it was your book not mine. In my defence, I will say that as a reader of this type of book there is something connective about noting where prior readers were inspired (provided it is subtle – I'll allow creased corners, but not scribbles – for the latter we must buy our own copy – which I am about to do as soon as I have finished telling you why).

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. Full Review

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Review of

Against a Peacock Sky by Monica Connell

5star.jpg Travel

Monica 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, with a 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 how they lived. She also went, presumably, with the academic discipline of how to find these things out, how to organise them in her mind, how to "understand" them in the context of her own paradigms, and how to keep enough notes and files and photos to help her create some greater sense of the experience after the event. Fortunately, she also went with a sense of open-ness and curiosity and a willingness to muck-in, to break her own rules and to truly connect with the people of the village where she hauled up. Full Review

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Review of

The Japanese Chronicles by Nicolas Bouvier

5star.jpg Travel

It never does to start a review of a book with a quote from the blurb, but sometimes it's unavoidable. Le Monde reviewed this book, at some point, with the words what the old master craftsmen would call a masterpiece. It is precisely that. A masterpiece in the sense of the craft as well as the art of writing. I'm going to hesitate to call it 'travel writing' because this is as much a history of Japan, a mythology-primer for the Japanese culture as it is a personal response to living and travelling in the country. Full Review

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Review of

Signs of Life by Stephen Fabes

5star.jpg Travel

I was brought up on maps and first-person narratives of tales of far away places. I was birth-righted wanderlust and curiosity. Unfortunately, I didn't inherit what Dr. Stephen Fabes clearly had which was the guts to simply go out and do it. I also didn't inherit the kind of steady nerve, ability to talk to strangers and basic practicality that would have meant that I would have survived if I had been gifted with the requisite 'bottle'. In order words I'm not the sort of person who will get on a bike outside a London hospital and not come home for six years. Fabes did precisely that. Full Review

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Review of

Toubab Tales: The Joys and Trials of Expat Life in Africa by Rob Baker

4star.jpg Travel

"Go to Mali," they said. "The music is amazing," they said. "And you get ten hours of sunshine every day." So I did.

Rob Baker is an ethnomusicologist. A what? I hear you cry. Well, an ethnomusicologist studies music in relation to culture, so rather like a folklorist studies the oral and written story traditions relating to a culture. Full Review

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Review of

Bucket Showers and Baby Goats: Volunteering in West Africa by Christine Brown

4.5star.jpg Travel

In the summer 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. 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. Full Review

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Review of

Rooms with a View: The Secret Life of Great Hotels by Adrian Mourby

4star.jpg Travel

Adrian Mourby has given us a flying visit to each of fifty grand hotels, from fourteen regions of the world, with the hotels in each section being arranged chronologically rather than by region, 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 Asia. Australia, it seems, does not go for the grand. Full Review

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Review of

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

5star.jpg History

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 hearing a book calling your name, rarely get it wrong. In 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 natural world, of those aspects of 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 am pleased to have it fall onto my path so quickly. Full Review

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Review of

O Joy for me! by Keir Davidson

3star.jpg Art

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, but because he wanted to for pleasure and adventure. His rapturous encounters with their natural beauty, and its literary consequences, changed our view of the world. Full Review

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Review of

The Great Horizon: 50 Tales of Exploration by Jo Woolf

3.5star.jpg History

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 faced with the most terrible conditions and still have the 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 most iconic explorers. Their stories are pretty incredible and Woolf does them justice. Full Review

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Review of

Berlin in the Cold War: 1959 to 1966 by Allan Hailstone

4star.jpg History

Berlin in the Cold War: 1959-1966 contains almost 200 photographs taken by author/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. Full Review

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Review of

The Marches by Rory Stewart

5star.jpg History

The Observer quote on the front of the paperback edition of Stewart's latest book observes This is travel writing at its finest. Perhaps, but to call it '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, and then (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. Full Review

link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/Bristow China/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21

Review of

China in Drag: Travels with a Cross-dresser by Michael Bristow

4star.jpg Autobiography

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. Full Review

Hurst Norfolk.jpg

Review of

On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks by John Hurst

4star.jpg Art

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 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 to make do with a couple of greetings cards when I saw On My Way: Norfolk Coastal Walks and I couldn't resist buying it. Full Review

Move on to Newest Trivia Reviews

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