The recklessness of George Mallory
Having quarrelled with his adept former fellow climber, Mallory attempted Everest in 1924 seriously ill-equipped, and taking an inexperienced 22-year-old with him instead
Between woods and water
Patrick Barkham pays tribute to the much-missed nature writer, whose core response to the call of the wild animated everything he did
Living with the Xingu in deepest Amazonia
The Brazilian journalist Eliane Brum moves from São Paulo to ‘reforest’ herself in the Amazon, and slowly gains the trust of a wary, isolated tribal people
Pico Iyer finds peace even in lost paradises
The novelist and travel writer reflects on the resilience of the human spirit in countries whose staggering beauty has largely been trashed
Bogs, midges and blinding rain: the joys of trekking in the Highlands
Raynor Winn’s first book, The Salt Path, was a genuine phenomenon. Having been evicted from their farm after 20 years,…
Tales of the riverbank: the power of the Po
It may not be the grandest of the world’s waterways – the Nile and Amazon are ten times its length…
The wonder of the wandering life
Anthony Sattin begins with a quotation from Bruce Chatwin, who famously tried all his life to produce a book about…
New light on the building of Stonehenge
When it comes to Stonehenge, we are like children continually asking why and never getting a conclusive answer. There are…
The least familiar stretches of Nile prove the most interesting
It’s one of the most tantalising travel images in the world — a felucca floating along the Nile at sunset,…
The jab that saved countless lives 300 years ago
This timely book celebrates one of the most remarkable women of the 18th century. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was so…
How Neanderthal are you?
I’m Neanderthal and proud of it
Has Britain learned from its failures in Afghanistan?
As the Americans prepare to leave Afghanistan, and in the UK we hold our own Defence Review, should we not…
Peru’s beauty has been a real curse
As the planet gets more and more ravaged, the mind can begin to glaze over at the cumulative general statistics…
Exotic and endangered: Madagascar in peril
Madagascar. There are so many delightful incongruities about the island. Despite being off the coast of Africa, because of the…
She just keeps rollin’ along: Colombia’s Magdalena River
As Colombia comes out of 50 years of civil war and into a still precarious peace, with some 220,000 dead,…
The pleasures — and trials — of knowing Bruce Wannell
Bruce Wannell was by some way one of the most charismatic travellers I have ever met. Despite his almost complete…
Lake Ohrid: an oasis of peace in the war-torn Balkans
Kapka Kassabova’s previous travel book, Border, was rightly acclaimed and won several prizes. The author travelled to the edge of…
Can’t anyone travel for fun any more?
There was a time when travel writers would set off with a spring in their step: Coleridge knocking the bristles…
Norfolk may be flat, but it’s never boring
Francis Pryor claims he would be a rich man if every person who told him that the Fens were ‘flat…
Will the Pilgrims’ Way soon rival the Camino de Santiago?
There are more than 100 cathedrals in England, Scotland and Wales of many different denominations (although I for one had…
Travel literature
Jonathan Raban was largely responsible for changing the nature of travel writing. Back in the 1970s when he began, the…
Dying buddleias on railway lines are what excite the new nature writer
A parliament of owls. A gaggle of geese. A convocation of eagles. But what is the generic term for the…
Reaping the whirlwind of climate change
I spent part of the summer sailing around Ithaca and the Ionian Sea. It was a good reminder of how…
Our islands’ story
Britain has 6,000 islands. Not as many as Sweden’s 30,000 but quite enough to be going on with. Only 132…
