TRAVEL WRITING

'A masterpiece.' New Yorker'Wholly riveting, brilliantly researched.' Evening Standard'A meticulous investigation into the seeds of disaster... fascinating, uncomfortable reading.' Sunday Times In 1968, Donald Crowhurst was trying to market a...

BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEKSir Ranulph Fiennes has climbed the Eiger and Mount Everest. He's crossed both Poles on foot. He's been a member of the SAS and...

Dreams of a Refugee is the extraordinary story of Mostafa Salameh, born in Kuwait to Palestinian refugees. After a childhood in the camps and a series of low-paid jobs, Mostafa...

During their university holidays in the late 1880s, S.K. Baker and three of his University College friends clad in stripy blazers and boaters spent time sailing and camping on the...

Adventure, memoir, storytelling and celebration of all things maritime meet in Waypoints, a beautifully written account of sea journeys from Scotland's west coast. In the book Ian Stephen reveals a...

The Northwest Passage proved so elusive for so long that many sailors and explorers believed it didn't actually exist. A sea route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through the...

When Countrywise presenter Paul Heiney's son Nicholas committed suicide aged 23, Paul and his wife, Times columnist Libby Purves, were rocked to the core. Nicholas had been a highly gifted...

In the very north of Britain, far from the bustling cities and picturesque countryside to the south, lies Western Europe's greatest wilderness: the Scottish Highlands. This is a land shaped...

In 1911 Roald Amundsen beat Robert Falcon Scott to the South Pole, and Scott and his colleagues all died on the return journey. Ernest Shackleton, who had served with Scott...

'Shocking, timely and - as you'd expect from Danny Wallace - very funny' - Adam Kay'Thrilling, thought-provoking, funny and wise. Danny has an incredible knack for taking the bizarre fringes...

"Francesco's Venice", now available in paperback, is the extraordinary story of the life of this intriguing city, told by a descendant of an old and distinguished Venetian family. Francesco explores...

Many Italian cities look back with pride to the days when they were independent republics: Naples, on the contrary, remembers its days as a royal capital, the brilliant administrative and...

Loved and hated in equal measure, London was for centuries the world's greatest city. Its streets, teeming with history, have always worn a variety of influences, reflecting the diverse crowds...

Featuring a vivid selection from biographies, novels, letters, poems, diaries and memoirs, this volume traces the story of St Petersburg from earliest times. Through these pieces, readers can observe the...

John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin moustache, and a cardboard sign that reads 'I'm Not Psycho', he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore...

Octogenarian Anthony Smith's journey was originally inspired by both the Kontiki Expedition of Thor Heyerdahl (who he knew) and the incredible story of the survivors of a 1940 boat disaster,...

Cathedrals and great churches are among the most iconic sights of the world's towns and cities.Visible from miles around, the cathedrals of Canterbury, St Paul's, Chartres and St Stephen's in...

'An absolute gem of a book' Alastair HumphreysKnow how to tramp and you know how to live... Know how to meet your fellow-wanderer, how to be passive to the beauty...

When Graham Robb made plans to cycle the legendary Via Heraklea, he had no idea that the line he plotted - stretching from the south-western tip of the Iberian Peninsula,...

The journey that made Richard Burton famous as a traveller and explorer in the nineteenth century was a pilgrimage to Mecca, which he carried out disguised as a Pashtun tribesman...

You can take the man out of the city, but is the countryside ready for him? Comedian and born and bred townie, Tony Hawks is not afraid of a challenge...

'Enjoyable and illuminating . . . Rob Schmitz writes with great affection' GuardianShanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in...

Travel writer Bill Bryson looks at the language of America and explains the history behind it, including the origins of phrases such as "The real McCoy" and the "G-string"; why...

Starting in the Gobi desert in winter, adventurer Rob Lilwall sets out on an extraordinary six-month journey, walking almost 5000 kilometres across China. Along the way he and his cameraman...

Novel Destinations invites readers to follow in the footsteps of much-loved authors, discover the scenes that sparked their imaginations, glimpse the lives they led, and share a bit of the...

'We were twenty-eight men facing winter on a bleak barren beach of Elephant Island - there was a possibility of a fatal shortage of food - there was no hope...

The May 1996 climbing season on Mount Everest will go down in infamy. Its story has been recounted in David Breashears's gripping IMAX film, Jon Krakauer's bestseller Into Thin Air,...

Dervla Murphy's journal of her cycle tours of South Africa, before, during, and after the transfer of power in 1994, gives a day-by-day view of that momentous period. When she...

Saturnine and quick-tempered, the formidable North Sea is often overlooked - even by those living within a stone's throw of its steel-grey waters. But as playground, theatre of war and...

Bear Grylls is no stranger to extremes. During a three-year stint in the SAS he was involved in a horrific parachuting accident in Africa and broke his back in three...

Mary Kingsley began her life as a typically conventional Victorian woman. She would end up travelling to some of the most inhospitable regions of Africa to become one of the...

A region steeped in fable and myth, Provence can accurately be called on the cultural crossroads of European history. A source of inspiration to artists, poets and troubadours it is...

Few Victorian travellers set off without a copy of this indispensable volume in their baggage. Francis Galton conceived the idea for the book whilst exploring Southwestern Africa in the 1850s...

They say dogs have it made. Well, these dogs certainly do. The dogs here get to see the world, from the tracks of the Iditarod in Alaska to an across-the-USA...

In Dip, Andrew Fusek Peters describes an extraordinary year of wild swimming. He leads us to rivers, lakes, waterfalls and hidden pools, into untamed landscapes that have the potential to...

Twenty-five years ago I invented a small town and started telling stories about it on the radio and ever since then, people have asked me if it's a real town,...

A world capital with a strong presence in the imaginations of many people throughout the world, New York has its share of icons - from the Statue of Liberty to...

The Ganges flows through northern India and Bangladesh for approximately 1,569 miles to the Bay of Bengal where it empties out. It is sacred to the Hindus who worship Ganga,...