Exploration
The mystery of Rapa Nui’s moai may be solved
The vast, painstakingly carved stone figures are thought to represent ancestors – and their partial destruction to signify punishment for their failure as guardians
The enduring lure of Atlantis
Damian Le Bas goes in search of the fabled city beneath the waves in an attempt to overcome the grief of losing his father
The great explorers of the past dismissed as mercenary opportunists
Simon Park follows the current trend of accusing Columbus, Magellan, Da Gama and other famous navigators of seeking personal enrichment above all else
The adventures of the indomitable Dorothy Mills
The society rebel with a fondness for cross-dressing travelled widely in Africa, South America and the Middle East, dying in 1959, aged 70, with bags packed for the next expedition
Why are the sailors who first braved the Atlantic so often ignored?
Long before Columbus crossed the ocean in 1492, the Phoenicians had discovered the Azores, and by the year 1000 Norse men and women were eking out an existence in Greenland
Making tracks
Now in her seventies, the travel writer returns to her childhood in Australia, and the trauma of losing her mother at the age of 11
Man of many parts
William Boyd taps into the classical novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man’s century-spanning life, even to the…
Into thin air
John Keay has for many years been a key historian and prolific contributor to the romance attaching to the highest…
Half blind to the world
In 1866, Dante Gabriel Rossetti visited a London print shop to buy a large canvas of a Renaissance street. He…
An accidental hero
Ferdinand Magellan’s fame was largely undeserved. Horatio Clare sees the explorer cut down to size
The second-worst journey in the world
The epic story of the Antarctic voyage of the Belgica (1897-9) has all the ingredients of a truly glorious misadventure:…
Journey to the unknown
Narratives of frozen beards in polar hinterlands never lose their appeal. Most of the good stories have been told, but…
Another man with a mission
How refreshing in a time of general sensitivity to find a book intended to infuriate and debunk. Welcome to the…
Just the beginning
In Japan, people thought the world would end in 1052. In the decades leading up to judgment day, Kyoto was…
A remote island tribe in Indonesia makes whaling seem positively noble
Our relations with cetaceans have always been charged with danger and delight, represented by the extremes of the Book of…
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.…
Bitten by the cold: the strange attraction of polar exploration
‘We had seen God in his splendours, heard the text that nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of…
Leeches, bats and toxic sap in Borneo’s Eden
Eton turns out prime ministers of various stripes and patches, but it also forges fine explorers. It seems to prepare…
Holy mackerel! Civilisation begins with fishing
Fish. Slippery, mysterious creatures. They are mysterious because of where they live, in vast waters, and because they elude the…
Frozen beards and hot tempers
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air,…
Humboldt’s gift
The Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt was once the most famous man in Europe bar Napoleon. And if you judge…
South Georgia Notebook
The terrible news that Henry Worsley had died just 30 miles short of crossing the Antarctic continent unsupported reached me…
The rough end of Europe
Michael Pye appears out of his depth in a cold, grey sea in the mists of time, says Adam Nicolson
The incredible journey
Sam Leith marvels at a lone horseman’s 10,000-mile ride, braving bandits, quicksands, vampire bats and revolution in search of ‘variety’
Fabled splendours
Peter Parker on the age-old allure of the Indian subcontinent
