Secondhand Books Travel Writings

A true story of one of the world's strangest plants and humanity's oddest obsessions: the orchid, brought to book by the author, traveller and self-confessed orchid obsessive. From the Orinoco...

Dervla Murphy often recalled these words while pedalling or pushing her bicycle over some of the roughest roads in sub-Saharan Africa. Yet the beauty of the contrasting landscapes along her...

Thurston Clarke needed twelve visas to travel along the equator and this book is the culmination of the journey. The countries he travelled through include Borneo, Sumatra, Singapore, Nairobi, Quito,...

There was never one Silk Road - but several. The route chosen by Colin Thubron passes through China, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, taking in the most sterile desert...

For Ibn Batuttah of Tangier, being medieval didn't mean sitting at home waiting for renaissances, enlightenments and easyJet. It meant travelling the known world to its limits. Seven centuries on,...

Thubron's first travel book since "Behind the Wall" (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award) describes the newly emergent countries of Central Asia, originally part...

Warned by a fortune-teller not to risk flying, the author - a seasoned correspondent - took to travelling by rail, road and sea. Consulting fortune-tellers and shamans wherever he went,...

A bracing and beguiling quest for the world's deepest, purest snowfall that takes us from carrot-nosed snowmen in frosty gardens to the most perilous peaks on earth - a book...

Charting a course through the Pacific Northwest, through American history and recent world events, "Driving Home" is a must for fans of Jonathan Raban, as well as the perfect introduction...

In January 2015 Dick and Angel Strawbridge embarked on the journey of a lifetime when they swapped their cosy two-bedroom flat in East London for a derelict chateau with 12...

Patrick Leigh Fermor was only 18 when he set off to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, described many years later in A Time of Gifts and Between...

The Emperor's Last Stand is a book about St Helena, an island with a sad, strange history, and about the tangle of stories and myths, absurdities and simple facts that...

The south of France, known for its beauty, perfect climate, fresh produce, excellent cuisine, fine wines and steeped in history - but what lurks behind?This is a humorous yet cautionary...

A classic of mountaineering literature, this is the story of the harrowing first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, the most legendary and terrifying climb in history. Heinrich...

In this account of the third of Michael Palin's travel adventures for BBC Television, he journeys for almost a year, covering 50,000 miles and all of the 18 countries that...

The story of how six men and one woman made maritime history: sailing the Pacific on a bamboo raft where every wave washed right through the structure. Their purpose was...

Getting away from it all is becoming increasingly popular with many people spending most of their free time visiting wild areas. But if you want to go backpacking how do...

The former kingdom of Siam was, for 700 years, the only country in South-East Asia not to be invaded by a foreign power. Yet Thailand today is on odd hybrid...

Kuki Gallmann, whose bestseller "I Dreamed of Africa" captured the beauty and drama of the Kenyan Highlands, here evokes through a tapestry of interwoven episodes the magic that touches all...

These brief and telling stories of rustic life and love are set in the remote and barren Tras-os-Montes - over the mountains - region of North East Portugal. The author...

Bestselling author A.J. Jacobs has undergone a life-changing and entertaining journey. The idea is deceptively simple: he takes one of our greatest pleasures- our morning cup of coffee - and...

The Danes are the happiest people in the world, and pay the highest taxes.'Neutral' Sweden is one of the biggest arms manufacturers in the world.Finns have the largest per capita...

The Scottish traveller James Bruce, who reached Cairo in 1768, explained that he was on his way up the Nile merely to see what was there. In his footsteps there...

An indispensable, hugely informative and consistently entertaining guide to Provence by the best-selling writer who has made the region his own. Organised from A-Z but far from a conventional work...

Never in history have we seemed to have such global freedom, such an opportunity to indulge our wildest tastes. We think we live in a time of unprecedented choice. But...