Does William Barents deserve to have a sea named after him?
Narratives of frozen beards in polar hinterlands never lose their appeal. Most of the good stories have been told, but…
Sybille Bedford — a gifted writer but a monstrous snob
Sybille Bedford died in 2006, just short of 95. She left four novels, a travel book, two volumes of legal…
Iceland is bursting with cabinets of curiosities
Competition is stiff among museums in Iceland. The Phallological Museum in Húsavík, devoted to the penis, stands tall in a…
Is it true that men navigate better than women?
Some years ago I participated in a late-night Radio 3 show on exploration and travel. When I left the studio…
The exotic Silk Road is now a highway to hell
This engaging book describes the Norwegian author’s travels round the five Central Asian Stans — a region where toponyms still…
Whatever happened to glasnost and perestroika?
This is a timely book. It addresses the challenges of a fractious and fractured Europe. The first word of the…
Gales and Gaels — sailing solo from Cornwall to the Summer Isles
This is the story of a solo voyage in a 31ft- wooden sailing boat called Tsambika. Philip Marsden pilots his…
The unearthly powers of the North Pole
Having spent too much of my life at both poles (writing, not sledge-pulling), I know the spells those places cast.…
The gambler and the hooker: Awful Beauty, by Andrei Navrozov, reviewed
This book — the title is from Pasternak —is billed as ‘literary fiction’. The narrator, a Russian gambler and drinker…
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…
Was there ever anything romantic about the Romany life?
Damian Le Bas is of Gypsy stock (he insists on the upper case throughout his book). His beloved great-grandmother told…
Doris Lessing: from champion of free love to frump with a bun
‘I am interested only in stretching myself, in living as fully as I can.’ Lara Feigel begins her thoughtful book…
What makes a semi-police state happy?
This charming collection of individual photographic portraits of Bhutanese citizens intentionally highlights the two central features of the kingdom today:…
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,…
For fashionable Victorian travellers, the only way was Norway
‘The only use of a gentleman in travelling,’ Emmeline Lowe wrote in 1857, ‘is to take care of the luggage.’…
Thin air and frayed tempers
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air,…
The revolution that went up in smoke
‘Every day’, writes the foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson in this account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, ‘see-sawed between joy and…
The story of Sikkim’s last king and queen reads like a fairy tale gone wrong
Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…
A Victorian sailor is the new love of my life
Jenny Balfour Paul is an indigo dye expert. She has written two books on the subject, and lectures around the…
Dreaming of a golden future: there will always be people willing to sacrifice all in the pursuit of gold
In 2008, the price of gold lofted above $1,000 an ounce for the first time in history, inspiring a rush…
The greatest American Arctic disaster
In the course of the 19th century, various flotillas of expeditions hastened to the polar regions in little wooden ships…
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