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Colin Thubron

Colin Thurbon’s beautiful prose unfolds along the Silk Road, unearthing a richly layered past on his most ambitious journey. 
 
 On buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey. A magnificent account of an ancient world in modern ferment, Thubron covers over 7000 miles in eight months enduring a near-miss with a drunk-driver, incarceration in a Chinese cell, and undergoing root canal treatment without anaesthetic, along the way. 
 
VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind

Shadow of the Silk Road

(Vintage Voyages)

Laurie Lee

Andalusia is a passion - and fifteen years after his last visit Laurie Lee returned. He found a country broken by the Civil War, but the totems of indestructible Spain survive: the Christ in agony, the thrilling flamenco cry-the pride in poverty, the gypsy intensity in vivid whitewashed slums, the cult of the bullfight, the exultation in death, the humour of hopelessness-the paradoxes deep in the fiery bones of Spain. Rich with kaleidoscopic images, A Rose for Winter is as sensual and evocative as the sun-scorched landscape of Andalusia itself.

A Rose For Winter

Barry Lopez

**AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4** 
 
'A master nature writer' (New York Times) provides the ultimate natural, social and cultural history of the Arctic landscape. 
 
The author of Horizon's classic work explores the Arctic landscape and the hold it continues to exert on our imagination. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ROBERT MACFARLANE 
 
Lopez's journey across our frozen planet is a celebration of the Arctic in all its guises. A hostile landscape of ice, freezing oceans and dazzling skyscapes. Home to millions of diverse animals and people. The stage to massive migrations by land, sea and air. The setting of epic exploratory voyages. 
 
In crystalline prose, Lopez captures the magic of the Arctic: the essential mystery and beauty of a continent that has enchanted man's imagination and ambition for centuries. 
 
'The Arctic dreamland seen and described by a writer of rare perception and poetic descriptive power... The pages sparkle with Arctic light' Scotsman

Arctic Dreams

Russell Page

A fabulous book about designing gardens great and small, packed with wisdom on the abiding principles of gorgeous garden design. 
 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALAN TITCHMARSH 
 
Russell Page was one of the most legendary gardeners and landscapers of the last century. He designed gardens great and small for clients around the world. A rare combination of born plantsman and garden architect, he was a master of colour, form and structure. Page also understood that most tricky dimension of garden design: the passage of time. From Longleat to the Frick Collection, his gardens can be enjoyed to this day. 
 
Packed with wisdom and beautiful writing, this book offers a unique perspective on great garden design and is essential reading for every gardener. 
 
'One of the most thoughtful and civilized gardening books ever written, by a master designer' Daily Telegraph

The Education of a Gardener

Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting. 
 
'I was trying to learn to write, commencing with the simplest things, and one of the simplest things of all and the most fundamental is violent death' 
 
This is Hemingway's classic portrait of the pageantry of bullfighting. Here are the sights, the sounds, the excitement, and above all, the knowledge, that fuelled Hemingway's passion for Spain and the bullfight. This remarkable book contains some of his finest writing, inspired by the intense life, as well as the inevitable death, of those hot, violent afternoons. 
 
'Hemingway's style, at its best, is a superb vehicle for revealing tenderness of feeling beneath descriptions of brutality' Guardian

Death in the Afternoon

Bruce Chatwin

'The book that redefined travel writing' Guardian 
 
 Bruce Chatwin sets off on a journey through South America in this wistful classic travel book 
 
With its unique, roving structure and beautiful descriptions, In Patagonia offers an original take on the age-old adventure tale. Bruce Chatwin’s journey to a remote country in search of a strange beast brings along with it a cast of fascinating characters. Their stories delay him on the road, but will have you tearing through to the book’s end. 
 
 ‘It is hard to pin down what makes In Patagonia so unique, but, in the end, it is Chatwin’s brilliant personality that makes it what it is… His form of travel was not about getting from A to B. It was about internal landscapes’ Sunday Times

In Patagonia

Claudio Magris

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD FLANAGAN 
 
In this fascinating journey Claudio Magris, whose knowledge is encyclopaedic and whose curiosity limitless, guides his reader from the source of the Danube in the Bavarian hills through Austro-Hungary and the Balkans to the Black Sea. Along the way he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments - from Ovid to Kafka and Canetti - and in so doing sets his finger on the pulse of Central Europe, the vital crucible of a culture that draws on influences of East and West, of Christendom and Islam.

Danube

Peter Robb

Peter Robb's journey into the dark heart of Sicily uses history, painting, literature and food to shed light on southern Italy's legacy of political corruption and violent crime. Taking the trial of seven-times Prime Minister, Giulio Andreotti, for alleged Mafia involvement as its starting point, Midnight in Sicily combines a searching investigation with an exuberant, sensual appreciation of this beautiful and bewildering island.

Midnight in Sicily

Joseph Mitchell

'The master of a journalistic style long vanished - urbane, lucid, courteous... A masterpiece of observation and storytelling' Ian McEwan 
 
Mitchell is the laureate of old New York. The hidden corners of the city and the people who lived there are his subject. He captured the waterfront rooming-houses , nickel-a-drink saloons, all-night restaurants, the 'visionaries, obsessives, imposters, fanatics, lost souls, the end-is-near street preachers, old Gypsy Kings and old Gypsy Queens, and out-and-out freak-show freaks.' Mitchell's trademark curiosity, respect and graveyard humour fuel these magical essays. 
 
Written between 1943 and 1965, Up in the Old Hotel is the complete collection of Joseph Mitchell 's New Yorker journalism and includes McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr Flood, The Bottom of the Harbour and Joe Gould's Secret. 
 
 
'Joseph Mitchell is buried treasure' Salman Rushdie

Up in the Old Hotel

This is Hemingway's East African safari journal. 
 
'All I wanted to do was get back to Africa' 
 
Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in - and fascination with - big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip. It is an examination of the lure of the hunt and an impassioned portrait of the glory of the African landscape and of the beauty of a wilderness that was, even then, being threatened by the incursions of man. 
 
'In a class by itself - the country at all hours shines bright and clear in these pages' Daily Telegraph 
 
'The best-written story of big-game hunting anywhere' New York Times

Green Hills of Africa

Walter Scott

On the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo discover a fascinating primary source: Walter Scott's accounts of his journey to the battlefield 
 
In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo tourists flocked from Britain to witness the scene of the most important conflict of their generation. Walter Scott was among them, and with a commission from his publisher for a travel book and a long poem. These prose and verse accounts bring to vivid life the carnage, spectacle and excitement of a fascinating period of European history. 
 
 Brilliantly introduced and annotated by Paul O'Keeffe, this edition elucidates and contextualises Scott's first-hand account of his travels, his dashing epic, ‘The Field of Waterloo’ and the eerily chilling 'Dance of Death'.

Scott on Waterloo

Chatwin’s brilliantly unique record of his adventures in Patagonia and the fascinating people he meets along the way. 
 
 Beautifully written and full of wonderful descriptions and intriguing tales, In Patagonia is an account of Bruce Chatwin's travels to a remote country in search of a strange beast and his encounters with the people whose fascinating stories delay him on the road. 
 
VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind

Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen's account of a time spent in Rome is no ordinary guidebook but an evocation of a city - its history, its architecture and, above all, its atmosphere. She describes the famous classical sites, conjuring from the ruins visions of former inhabitants and their often bloody activities and speculates about the immense noise of ancient Rome, the problems caused by the Romans' dining posture, and the Roman temperament. She evokes the city's moods - by day, when it is characterised by golden sunlight, and at night, when the blaze of the moon 'annihilates history'.

Showing results for: ‘Michael Symmons Roberts’

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