Robert Louis Stevenson was not only a gifted writer, he was also an indefatigable traveller. His thirst for adventure was formed by his boyhood visits to remote Scottish lighthouses, & he spent much of his life fleeing the rigours of both cold climates & social orthodoxy. The walking trip that Stevenson describes in [i] Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes[/i] (1879) was taken when the nascent author was still in his twenties & pining for a lost love. Accompanied by Modestine, the eponymous donkey he hired to carry his camping gear, the journey proved both challenging & charming. The book is infused with all of the qualities that make Stevenson the most popular of writers: humour & humanity, poetry & perspicacity, ebullience & intelligence. & his timeless exhortation continues to inspire all true travellers: For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move. ...

Katie Hickman went to Mexico looking for magic. She found it in the circus
- Big Top, clowns, elephants & all
- where cheap,

...

This isn't another piece of travel literature concerned with buying a small holding in Spain, Italy or France & pursuing some horticultural dream. Rather Tim Mackintosh-Smith, a previous winner of the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, follows the journey of possibly the greatest traveller of all time, Ibn Battutah, or IB as he is affectionately referred to. Ibn Battutah set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on the pilgrimage to Mecca. By the time he returned 29 years later, he had visited most of the known world & spent half a lifetime covering some 75, 000 miles. This text follows his footsteps, covering the first stage of his journey from Tangier to Constantinople & exploring both the 14th century & its parallel landscape: the contemporary Muslim world. Needless to say travelling in the early fourteenth century was not straight forward, & the trail proceeds via the Nile Delta, Northern Syria, Oman, & Dhofar before heading for Anatolia, the Crimea & finally ending up at Constantinople. As Mackintosh-Smith makes clear he has left gaps in IB's itinerary as he doesn't have a spare 30 years. The writer studied Classical Arabic at Oxford, & his cultural & historical references are fairly awesome. ...

` All writers of fiction should be required by law to go out & do a bit of reporting from time to time, just to remind them how different the real world in front of their eyes is from the invented world behind them`. This is what Frayn did in mid-career, when he took up his old trade, journalism, & wrote a series of occasional articles for ” The Observer” about some of the places in the world that interested him. He wanted to describe `not the extraordinary but the ordinary, the typical, the everyday` & his accounts became the starting-point for some of the novels & plays he wrote later. From a kibbutz in Israel to summer rains in Japan, bicycles in Cambridge to Notting Hill at the end of the 1950s, they are glimpses of a world which sometimes seems tantalizingly familiar, sometimes vanished forever. ...

” Travels With Boogie” is the story of two city slickers
- one an unattractive but streetwise mongrel from Stockwell, the other
...

Our society worships at the fountain of youth. Each year, we try to delay the arrival of old age, using everything at our disposal, from extreme exercise & botox to pilates & cosmetic dentistry. But in the process, are we missing out on a distinct & extraordinarily valuable stage of life? Asking whether it is better to be forever young or to grin toothlessly & live an authentic old age, Daniel Klein journeys to the Greek island of Hydra to see a different side to aging. There he draws on the lives of Octagenarian Greek locals, as well as philosophers ranging from Epicurus to Sartre, to discover the secrets of aging happily. A travel book, a witty meditation, & an optimistic guide to living well, this is a delightful, quirky jaunt through the terrain of old age, led by a perceptive & witty modern-day sage. ...

” To travel with James in these pages is to take an unhurried vacation with a thoroughly seasoned, supremely cultivated, acutely intelligent companion. Our guide is a curious, engaged observer not only of landscapes & streets & cathedrals but also of paintings & plays & the characteristics--national, social, & individual--of the people we encounter at his side. This is a book to be read slowly, the better to absorb its sights & sounds, its insights & reflections.” --from the foreword by Hendrik Hertzberg Brimming with charm, wit, & biting criticism, this new collection of travel essays reintroduces Henry James as a formidable travel companion. Whether for a trip to Lake George or an afternoon visit to an art exhibit in Paris, James will delight readers with his insights & make them feel nostalgic for places they`ve never been. ...

Travels with Herodotus records how Kapuscinski set out on his first forays
- to India, China & Africa
- with the great Greek

...

With a rare combination of great economy of means & unfailing panache, Antony Cleminson`s drawings of palatial buildings & urban settings are endlessly delightful & fascinating. Collected from more than 60 years of traveling with his wife Jan, a concert violinist, they take in Engl&, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Croatia, Russia, Jordan, Syria, & Yemen. They bring not only extreme sensitivity to place, but also an engineer`s understanding of structure, & an historian`s understanding of style. Pencil, chalk, charcoal, red & black ink, & india ink are some of the media used, & the book is printed on genuine Ingres paper to reproduce these beautiful drawings as closely as possible. Will appeal to those with a love of architectural heritage in Europe & the Middle East. ...

After a thirty-year career as a high profile vet, columnist, presenter & author Bruce Fogle
- the UK`s bestselling cat & dog
...