Travels with Charley is an account of legendary American writer John Steinbeck’s journey in 1960, when he was almost sixty years old, to rediscover his native l&. Steinbeck felt that he might have lost touch with its sights, sounds & the essence of its people. Accompanied only by his dog, Charley, he travelled across the United States in a pick-up truck. His journey took him through almost forty states, & he saw things that made him proud, angry, sympathetic & elated. All that he saw & experienced is described with remarkable honesty & insight. ...

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

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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. ...

One of Graham Greene`s most loved novels, Travels With My Aunt is the story of Henry Pulling, an unmarried retired bank manager who has just been made redundant &, with no prospects or hobbies other than tending his dahlias, finds himself agreeably excited by his mother`s funeral. It is at this sad event that for the first time in more than half a century, he meets his formidable & irrepressible Aunt Augusta, & from this point on, his life is never to be the same again. An initial mix-up involving an illegal stash of marijuana & his mother`s ashes sets the tone for things to come, & abandoning Southwood & his dahlias, Henry goes on to travel through Brighton, Paris, Istanbul & then Paraguay. With his Aunt in tow
- or, rather, in the tow of his aunt
- Henry joins the shiftless, twilight society of hippies, war criminals, smugglers & CIA men & gradually comes to realize that ” Beyond Latimer Road there stretched another world
- the world of Wordsworth & Curran & Monsieur Dambreuse & Colonel Hakim & the mysterious Mr Visconti” & that this world is more his country than Engl&, proving in the process than one may come to life at any stage during the course of a lifetime. Full of both bittersweet moments (as Henry comes to feel differently about his old life & origins) & hilarious ones, as he embarks on the new, the novel contains an array of vividly drawn characters
- the formidable Aunt Augusta herself being one of the most unforgettable of Greene`s huge oeuvre
- who will thrill, move & have you laughing out loud in turns. A romp of a read.




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Fi Glover is a bit of a traveller. She loves hotels, air stewardesses & fluffy towelling robes, but above all, she loves radio. One night, whilst recording BBC 2`s ” Travel Show”, she found herself in the far reaches of Texas, suffering from a night of line-dancing & an over-enthusiastic radio DJ. She started to wonder about all the places she`d ended up in, all the radio DJs she`d listened to, the way a new radio station made her feel at home & yet gave her the fastest insight into an alien city or community. She decided to take a journey around the world collecting hotel freebies & DJs
- from the charismatic Rose who guided Montserrat through the tragedy of their volcanic eruption to Dr Laura, who talks the dysfunctional of New York through their psychotic days; from the peace-keeping corps of Beirut & their radio-station-in-a-hut to the despairing English football broadcasters in their radio-station-above-a-caf- in Brussels 2000. From Somerset to Beirut, Las Vegas to Vienna, ” Travels With My Radio” is a wonderfully funny & strangely moving quest to find the perfect radio station.
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Out of a lifetime of travelling, Martha Gellhorn has selected her ”best horror journeys”. She bumps through rain-sodden, war-torn China to meet Chiang Kai-Shek, floats listlessly in search of u-boats in the wartime Caribbean & visits a dissident writer in the Soviet Union against her better judgement. Written with the eye of a novelist & an ironic black humour, what makes these tales irresistible are Gellhorns explosive & often surprising reactions. Indignant, but never righteous & not always right, through the crucible of hell on earth emerges a woman who makes you laugh with her at life, while thanking God that you are not with her.” Martha Gellhorn at her witty, acidulous, sympathetic & wholly delightful best: fine observation of landscape & incident, & even finer observation of character”, John Simpson. ...

Travel writer Jim Perrin is a regular contributor to ” The Great Outdoors”, ” Climber” & ” The Daily Telegraph”. This volume collects the best of his recent work & covers venues as far apart as Garhwal & Montana, Kirgizstan & the High Arctic, Hungary & Cuba. It features Perrin spending time with headhunters in Borneo, narwhal in Lancaster Sound, wolves in Yellowstone, walking with his dog through Wales & finding out about the ”wild tribe” of remote Inishturk. ...

Virginia Woolf had a lively sense of place & delighted in `lighting accidentally...upon scenes which would have gone on, have always gone on, will go on, unrecorded, save for this chance glimpse. Following Virginia`s footprints from her beloved Sussex & Cornwall to wartime London, Italy & the Riviera to Greek mountains & the wilds of Spain, Jan Morris intersperses swift verbal sketches of a Greek peasant wedding, a fenland sky, an elderly spinster in a hotel dining room in Italy, or Bognor pier in the rain with her own brief, telling comments on both writer & subject. ...