TRAVEL WRITING

4,000 miles of unpredictable ocean. 500 Mars bars. 124 days of physical exertion. 3 Guinness World Records set. 1 incredible journey. On 1 April 2009, twenty-three-year-old Sarah Outen embarked on...

Disappointed to learn that Hotel California isn't actually in the phone book, radio producers Chris and Joe resolve to seek out the true spirit of rock and roll America. Roof...

I could hardly believe my eyes. A cold mantle of white was rapidly transforming our sunny paradise into a bizarre winterscape of citrus Christmas trees, cotton wool palms and snowball...

Steve and I clutched hands - his right in my left - and then we simultaneously pushed down with our feet. Cogs clicked, wheels turned, and we were on our...

The man with the gun pushed me down onto the carpet. I tried to cower to make my body curl smaller, instinctively covering my head.`Oh God, please don't kill me.'...

Over the years, authors, artists and amblers aplenty have felt the pull of the Thames, and now travel writer Tom Chesshyre is following in their footsteps.He's walking the length of...

Life in rural Mallorca continues to hold its magic for Anna and her family.When not juggling work deadlines, chatting with Johnny the toad or managing her ever-growing menagerie, Anna sets...

Fifty-five piers. Two weeks. One eccentric road trip.Before the seaside of their youth disappears forever, two friends from the landlocked Midlands embark on a peculiar journey to see all the...

Thom Wheeler is not a man to be put off by the prospect of an uncharted, impractical or downright dangerous journey. Having accidentally introduced his old school friend Vicky to...

'I have come to thank dark places for the light they bring to life.'Thomas Cook has always been drawn to dark places, for the powerful emotions they evoke and for...

From central Glasgow to rural Wiltshire, a husband-and-wife team track down Britain's rarest and most enigmatic animals.'Weasely my favourite book of the year.' Dave Goulson, author of Silent EarthA COUNTRYFILE...

Whether it is in Madrid's cafe s or in Barcelona's fish markets, van den Brinks takes you on a trip through Spain where tasting and smelling are the key occupations....

Sir Edmund Hillary described Douglas Mawson's epic and punishing journey across 600 miles of unknown Antarctic wasteland as 'the greatest story of lone survival in polar exploration'.This Accursed Land tells...

Great explorers are known for their hard-earned skills and meticulously honed character traits which have made their astonishing endeavours possible. Valuable lessons are waiting to be learned from the feats...

A New Statesman Book of the Year, 2021'Follow Iain Sinclair into the cloud jungles of Peru and emerge questioning all that seemed so solid and immutable.' Barry MilesFrom the award-winning...

November 1925: In search of health and sun, the writer D. H. Lawrence arrives on the Italian Riviera with his wife, Frieda, and is exhilarated by the view of the...

Cyclogeography is an essay about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and a portrait of London seen from the saddle. The bicycle enables us to feel a landscape, rather than...

AN INDIE BESTSELLER'It reminded me all over again of why I threw up everything for the magic of La Belle France' Carol Drinkwater, author of The Olive Farm'An utterly beguiling...

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...

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...

Look into the eyes of a jinn and you stare into the depths of your own soul...Writer and film-maker Tahir Shah - in his 30s, married, with two small children...

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...

At the age of twenty-six Matthew Fort first visited the Italian island of Sicily. He and his brother arrived in 1973 expecting sun, sea and good food, but they were...

The great explorers were the celebrities of their day - the romance and danger of their daring expeditions captured the public imagination and the world's headlines to an extraordinary degree....

No man is an island, wrote John Donne. BBC Home Editor Mark Easton argues the opposite: that we are all islands, and it is upon the contradictory shoreline where isolation...

Following the spirit of the world's longest coastal driving route, Paul Clements sets out to discover the real west of Ireland. Along the way he encounters memorable characters living on...

In 1922 a journalist commented on British tenacity to General Bruce, leader of the British Everest Expedition. Bruce replied with a single word: 'Shackleton'. Ernest Shackleton is one of history's...

Hillwalking is one of Ireland's most popular leisure activities today. Rock climbing has developed to a level of technical excellence with crags in almost every county and numerous indoor climbing...

In 1978 Timothy Garton Ash went to live in Berlin to see what that divided city could teach him about tyranny and freedom. Fifteen years later, by then internationally famous...

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...

Gladiators and goddesses, philosophers and poets, epic battles and romantic landscapes - the classical world has for centuries captivated and inspired the west. But what provoked the shift from the...

'Exquisite, powerful . . . I can think of no better way of commemorating British exploration's culminating triumph.' Simon Winchester? Coronation Everest offers a breathtakingly intimate evocation of the most...

This isn't Geoff Dyer's self-help book. Rather it is a book about how the author himself could do with a little help. In funny and thought-provoking prose, he describes a...

Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine. This new edition includes a previously unpublished epigraph in the form of...

Roads to Berlin maps the changing landscape of Germany, from the period before the fall of the Wall to the present. Written and updated over the course of several decades,...

The long-awaited final volume of the trilogy by Patrick Leigh Fermor.A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water were the first two volumes in a projected trilogy...

Ibn Battutah set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on the pilgrimage to Mecca. By the time he returned twenty-nine years later, he had visited most of the known...

NOW A MAJOR NEW TV SERIES: CAROL DRINKWATER'S SECRET PROVENCEThe third in the bestselling story which began with THE OLIVE FARM - from the author of THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER'Captures perfectly...

Sir Ernest Shackleton could never have imagined his name being closely associated with whisky, certainly not in the title of a book. Rarely did he consume strong drink. On his...

What are the wonders of the world? The Grand Canyon? The Hoover Dam? The Great Pyramid of Giza - the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world...

All I knew about Moldova were the names of eleven men printed on the inside back pages of my newspaper. None of them sounded to me like they were any...

Have you ever walked into a half-empty restaurant in France, only to be told that it's complete? Attempted to say "merci beaucoup" and accidentally complimented someone on their cute backside?...

A remarkable nineteenth-century account of Istanbul - which begins with a dazzling description of the city gradually appearing through the fog as the author's ship approaches the harbour - Constantinople...