Book review – travel
Kayaking solo from Shetland to the Channel
After kayaking solo in a November storm to a square mile of rock called Eilean a’Chleirich in the Summer Isles…
For a passionate ecologist, Barry Lopez burns a lot of oil
It is more than a generation since the appearance of Barry Lopez’s classic Arctic Dreams. That book’s effortless integration of…
The peculiar allure of the Pyrenees
On 26 August 1880 Henry Russell consummated his marriage in an unusual way. He was, to his own mind, married…
![View of Marseille from the basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde, also known as La Bonne Mère, traditionally regarded as the city’s protectress. ‘The Good Mother intervenes at sick beds, down shadowy streets, and in the dark hours of night,’ writes Iain Sinclair [image: Getty]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Marseille.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
How do our surroundings affect our health and happiness?
The Wellcome Trust puts on some of the most engaging exhibitions in London and holds in its permanent collection a…
The magnificent Atkinsons: rigours of travel in 19th-century Russia
Russia has always attracted a certain breed of foreigner: adventurers, drawn to the country’s vastness and emptiness; chancers, seeking fortunes…
Staggering to Jerusalem — a journey from darkness into light
Guy Stagg walked 5,500 km from Canterbury to Jerusalem, following medieval pilgrim paths, and he records the expedition in The…
Horatio Clare breaks the ice with the taciturn Finns
In this slim travel book Horatio Clare voyages as a guest on the Finnish icebreaker Otso (Bear), ‘mostly in darkness,…
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…
‘Russia’s Mississippi’ — or China’s — just keeps rolling along
In 2014, Beijing and Moscow signed a US$400 billion deal to deliver Russian gas to Chinese consumers. Construction of the…
Paul Theroux returns home — to guns and evangelism
During the first ten pages of this long work Paul Theroux, on a journey through the American South, meets two…
An elegy for Concorde, the most beautiful airliner of all time
The Concorde experience, a fleeting indulgence in luxurious grandiosity, began each day with circumvention of the hugger-mugger of the hoi…
Where are the green silk blinds of the once luxurious Metropolitan Line?
Most current writers on railways don’t want to appear at all romantic lest they be shunted into the ‘trainspotter’ siding.…
The darkest secret about commuting: some of us enjoy it
In the early days of Victorian railways, train journeys were (rightly) considered so dangerous that ticket offices sold life insurance…
A horse ride from Buenos Aires to New York? No problem!
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
Go east – the people get nicer, even if their dogs get nastier
When Nick Hunt first read Patrick Leigh Fermor’s account of his youthful trudge across Europe in A Time of Gifts…
The long and winding story of the Danube
For much of its history the Danube has been a disappointment. It looks so tempting on the map but, far…
Why worship Prince Philip?
In this travelogue, Matthew Baylis, the novelist and TV critic and former Eastenders screenwriter, goes to Tanna, a Melanesian island,…
