On November 2nd armed with a sheaf of visas.. .one suitcase.. .and my typewriter, I left humdrum London for the thrilling cities of the world... In 1959, Ian Fleming, the creator of ” James Bond”, was commissioned by the ” Sunday Times” to explore fourteen of the world`s most exotic cities. Fleming saw it all with a thriller writer`s eye. From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of underground haunts, & mingling with celebrities, gangsters & geishas. The result is a series of vivid snapshots of a mysterious, vanished world. ...

A hardback treasury of stories including well-known classics such as ` Treasure Island` & ` Sinbad the Sailor`, alongside brand new stories about robots, pirates, monsters & knights. This book will last for years as children enjoy having the tales read to them, & then reading them themselves. ...

A drinker`s crown of sorrow is remembering wetter days Through a Glass Lightly is part of ` Found on the Shelves`, published with The London Library. The books in this series have been chosen to give a fascinating insight into the treasures that can be found while browsing in The London Library. Now celebrating its 175th anniversary, with over 17 miles of shelving & more than a million books, The London Library has become an unrivalled archive of the modes, manners & thoughts of each generation which has helped to form it. ...

For thirty years, St. George Littledale & his wife Teresa mounted expeditions in North America & Asia
- they were an unlikely
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Perlmutter`s work is a historical treasure that will be presented for the first time in a book. Beginning in 1954, on assignment for the US Army, Perlmutter traveled through Europe. ” Europe in the Fifties. Through a Soldier`s Lens” shows a selection of his images taken in Germany, France, Italy, Portugal & Spain. ...

This anthology of travel writings on the Balkans is the first attempt to compile a representative sample of such commentary in a single volume. Taking the seventeenth century as a starting point, Through Another Europe comprises over fifty passages from some of the most interesting & exciting British & American travelogues, many of which are long out of print. ...

Journeying through England on horseback, the intrepid seventeenth-century traveller Celia Fiennes recorded every sight & experience of her adventure in her journal, from her delight at countryside cakes & the beauty of remote landscapes, to the challenges of disagreeable landladies, choppy sea crossings & a troublesome horse. Describing potteries in Staffordshire, cheesemaking in Cheshire, dyers in Exeter & tin miners in Cornwall, her writings give an unrivalled glimpse into an England of bustling industry & rich variety. Generations of inhabitants have helped shape the English countryside
- but it has profoundly shaped us too. It has provoked a huge variety of responses from artists, writers, musicians & people who live & work on the land
- as well as those who are travelling through it. English Journeys celebrates this long tradition with a series of twenty books on all aspects of the countryside, from stargazey pie & country churches, to man's relationship with nature & songs celebrating the patterns of the countryside (as well as ghosts & love-struck soldiers).

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New Zealand schoolteacher Les Horn had a brainstorm: why not navigate Europe's inland waterways, from England to Greece, in a small sailboat? Much to his surprise, he managed to sell his wife, Despina, & preteen children, Victoria & Charles, on the idea, & the following summer, installed in their 24-foot fixer-upper, Alea Jacta Est (the die is cast), the Horns set sail on the wry family odyssey chronicled in this delightful tale of misadventure. The Horns' ambitious plan was to pilot their balky boat down the Thames River to the English Channel & then on to Despina's native Greece via the Seine, Rhine, Danube, Black Sea, & Aegean. Along the way, the Horns would be treated to transforming glimpses of the real Europe; by plying the meandering waterways that nourish the continent like a gigantic circulatory system, they would discover all the hidden splendors not covered in any tour book & out of reach to all but the most intrepid wayfarers. Needless to say, things didn't turn out quite as expected. Plagued by accidents, breakdowns & delays, forced to forage for provisions, stymied at every turn by petty officials & cantankerous natives, the Horns, propelled more by pluck than by their cranky outboard motor, eventually made it to the Aegean, but not without their share of uproarious adventures in France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, & Turkey. In Through Europe at Four Knots, Les Horn combines an appreciation of the absurd with a journalist's eye for detail to weave a shrewdly funny account of a family voyage through Europe's variegated landscapes. Especially memorable are the family's surreal experiences of the epochal upheaval that swept Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. Through Europe at Four Knots is a rousing good read for fellow expatriates, sailors, travelers, & adventurers
- both actual & armchair. 'A riotous cruising adventure, liberally sprinkled with nuggets of comedy & history, which builds in tension as the Horn family crosses the European continental divide & is swept by the inexorable current of the Danube River deeper & deeper into Eastern bloc trouble. A great read that holds you to the end. Highly recommended'
- Nigel Calder, boating author.

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Through Siberia by Accident is Dervla Murphy’s book about a journey that didn’t happen
- & what happened instead. Suffering from
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The letters of Peter Le Mesurier (1789-1813) cover his service in the 9th Foot, from leaving for Portugal as an ensign in 1808 at the very start of the Peninsular War, up until Le Mesurier`s death at the Battle of the Nive in December 1813. The ` Fighting Ninth` saw more action than any other regiment, & this correspondence covers most of the key events of the Peninsular War; finally, grimly, `book-ended` by the young lieutenant`s death, just as Wellington invades France. He fought through Spain & Portugal: Salamanca, Corunna, San Sebastian, Vitoria these battles are spectacularly bloody & of great interest to the Napoleonic Wars reading public. The letters bring fresh insights & a wealth of telling detail. Le Mesurier had a fine eye: ` The Portuguese of our Division behaved uncommonly well when the cannon shots were thinning their ranks; not a man stirred.` The letters show the transformation of the boy into the man. He falls in love, suffers retreats & celebrates victories, witnesses sieges, rape & plunder, always spicing his letters with fascinating asides, wry humour, rich period detail, some very human fears & admissions, & the casual understatement of the British officer. Any unpublished letters from the conflict are scarce, but such an extensive unpublished collection is rare indeed. With background information & commentary provided by expert Adrian Greenwood, meticulously footnoted, this is a worthy addition to the literature of the Napoleonic Wars. ...