Slightly off-mint

Off-mint

Slightly off-mint

Slightly off-mint

Starting with quiz night in the Prince of Wales on Highgate Hill, Mark Mason sets off in search of the perfect quiz question. In venues as far-flung as a hotel bar in Edinburgh and a village pub in Suffolk, he meets the aficionados of the quiz world and a veritable deluge of facts, figures and trivia.

Slightly off-mint.

Slightly off-mint

Peter Clutterbuck, now a professional yachtsman and sailing instructor, looks back to the 1960s and youthful adventures in his Wayfarer dinghy Calypso. He learned to sail it in coastal waters, then ventured out to sea – across the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, and eventually the North Sea and the Baltic. For anyone with a love of sailing and the sea, Clutterbuck’s book is both an engrossing read and a mine of information and advice.

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Slightly off-mint.

Spanning five continents and several centuries, the journeys in this book are united by their feats of endurance and lasting impact. Some, such as Columbus’s 1492 landfall in the Americas, changed the course of history; others, such as Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, altered the way we see the world. Illustrated with historical and modern maps and photographs, they include Amelia Earhart’s transatlantic flight, the voyages of Zheng He, and the travels of Ibn Battuta.

Levison Wood was just 22 in 2004 when he decided to hitchhike from England to Goa, via Russia, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Looking back on his adventure, he recalls how, fascinated by the ancient cultures that flourished along the Silk Road and following the footsteps of explorers such as Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo, he made his way through mountains and war zones, meeting shepherds and priests, Russian Mafiosi and mujahideen fighters.

In the late 1970s Nick and Ros sold their Welsh farm and took their three children to the Greek island of Ikaria, with just a few hundred drachmas and no knowledge of the language. Soon their lives were entwined with those of the islanders. Looking back after 40 years, Nick recalls night fishing, work on building sites, a kindly nun, and an enigmatic visitor called Artemis. Slightly off-mint.

The intrepid journeys described in this travelogue are not just admirable feats of endurance or exploration but are also eccentric. Among the stories are an Australian man who mailed himself home from London in a crate, and the motorcycle tour of Bavaria by artist Grayson Perry, accompanied by his teddy bear.

In 2017–18, at the start of her ‘tenth decade’, the popular historian, author of the Pax Britannica trilogy, and travel writer Jan Morris (b.1926) decided to keep a diary of thoughts. Ranging back and forth over an extraordinarily interesting life, but also examining the joys and frustrations of old age at home in North Wales, Morris’s 188-day diary treats us to her opinions on anything that comes to mind – be it Ovid, walls, whistling or Brexit. Slightly off-mint.

Throughout history, many travellers have seen deserts as hostile, desolate places; but William Atkins was drawn to them. Travelling to five continents over three years, he visited Oman’s Empty Quarter, Australia’s nuclear test grounds, China’s Gobi Desert, the dried-out Aral Sea, and the arid regions of the American West. Illustrated with maps of each area, his travelogue explores the history, the people, the cultures, the folklore and the symbolism of these forbidding places.

Billy Connelly recounts with customary humour his ten-week journey through the North West Passage, piloting an aeroplane over Iceberg Valley, trekking through mountains and kayaking through ice floes. Although in awe of the landscape, illustrated here with hundreds of photographs, it was his encounters with ordinary people that made the greatest impression, introducing him to traditions that were essential for survival in this challenging environment.

Drawing on diaries and sketchbooks kept by visitors over three centuries, this book presents the histories of the 16 finest parks and gardens in Wales. An examination of travel conditions in the age of the stagecoach precedes a survey of changing horticultural fashions from the Renaissance to the end of the Romantic era. More than 200 period paintings, drawings and engravings are shown with photographs of the gardens today.

Taking the meaning of home as their theme, each of the titles in the Hometown Tales series features two stories, one by an established author and one by an emerging voice. Using their local knowledge, the writers champion regional diversity, with a narrative set in a place they are most familiar with. This volume opens with Silver in the Quarter, a coming-of-age story in which a boy is caught up in the 1974 pub bombings. In the second contribution, In the Ape’s Shadow, comedian Stewart Lee, born in Solihull in 1968, explores the post-punk music scene that encouraged him to take to the stage.

The author and TV presenter Nicholas Crane traces the journeys of eight adventurers whose travels across Britain provided a valuable written narrative of the country’s landscapes and treasures. Adopting their original mode of transport where possible, he follows parts of Celia Fiennes’s 17th-century tour of England on horseback, takes to a boat on the Wye as William Gilpin did in 1770, and recreates HV Morton’s trip around Scotland in 1929 in a bull-nosed Morris.

Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire… Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast is familiar and reassuring to many who have no idea of the places it describes. Rounding the British mainland, by boat and light aircraft, Connelly describes the land- and seascapes of every area in broadcast order. He never makes it to Rockall, an isolated crag in the Atlantic, but then, as he observes, more people have landed on the moon.

This wry account of a rail tour of the USA ranges from New York to LA, from Niagara Falls to New Orleans. The author meets card-playing Amish, traces his Irish roots with the Mormons, and visits a number of microbreweries along the way.

On foot and by canoe, from Carlingford Lough to Derry/Londonderry, Lough Foyle and Magilligan Point on the northern coast, Garrett Carr follows the twisted border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Travelling along rivers and through divided towns, villages and farms in borderlands with a troubled past and an uncertain future, Carr aims to examine ‘how the land and its people have reacted to the border, and the ways in which the line is made manifest’.

Adrian Flanagan’s solo expedition took him down to Cape Horn and the Southern Ocean, then all the way north to cross the ice-filled waters of the Russian Arctic. This account of his adventure includes maps charting his progress on the 30,000-mile journey and diary entries recording challenges that included capsizing, a tropical cyclone, encounters with whales and polar bears and a brush with pirates.

When Mendelsohn was preparing to teach an undergraduate seminar on Homer’s Odyssey his 81-year-old father asked to join the classes. In this combination of memoir and literary criticism, the two men explore the epic together and take a Mediterranean cruise to follow in Odysseus’ footsteps. Through the ancient poem’s timeless themes the classicist and retired research scientist come to know each other better and gradually uncover long-buried secrets about their own family relationships.

The first Europeans to see the islands of the South Pacific thought they had found Paradise, but the disruption and disease they brought devastated their ecology and indigenous cultures. Sailing to Vanuatu, Fiji and the Cook Islands, Hans-Christof Wächter discovers what has survived.

The remote South Atlantic island of St Helena is famous as the site of Napoleon’s 68-month incarceration as ‘Europe’s prisoner’. Willms draws insights from his own visit as he investigates what life was like there and dispels legends that the Emperor himself helped to create.

First published as a trilogy, this travelogue explores the three great maritime cities of the eastern Mediterranean. Delving into their cosmopolitan histories and culture, shaped by Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Jews and many others, it reveals these ancient ports to be rooted in – and linked by – not the landmasses of Europe, Asia and Africa on which they stand, but a ‘continent’ of their own: the sea itself.

Part travel book, part musings on life from the deck of a yacht, this is Larsson’s homage to Celtic lands and waters, from the westernmost point of Spain (Finisterre) to the north of Scotland (Cape Wrath).

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In 1867 Mark Twain joined a six-month tour of the Middle East amid a company of Presbyterians committed to bringing Christianity to the Ottoman Empire. Following in his footsteps, Ian Strathcarron travels through Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank to Jerusalem. He finds many parallels between the troubled region then and now, and rich ironies to match Twain’s observations of his travelling companions.

Having been raised in an Irish family in South Africa, the poet-novelist Christopher Hope grew up with a deep insight into apartheid. He returned to the country, after twelve years’ absence, during the 1987 whites-only election. Recalling a childhood road trip (as a white boy running through the landscape) he gives an objective account of the historic grievances of both Afrikaners and the black townships.

A quarter of a century after the end of apartheid, Christopher Hope embarks on a road trip through his homeland from Cape Town to the Zimbabwean border, meeting exploited black miners and embittered white nationalists. In the face of persisting economic inequality and interracial bitterness, he concludes that Nelson Mandela’s dream of a ‘rainbow nation’ is fading, and it might be the turn of the whites to hear what anti-apartheid politician Oliver Tambo called ‘the Move-on Blues’.

An Anzac veteran, Sydney Loch (1888–1955) and his wife Joyce settled in Thessalonika, in the last village where women were allowed before the wall of the male-only Athos peninsula. Drawing on 25 years of living there and exploring the Holy Mountain, this is Loch’s account of the autonomous region inhabited only by Orthodox monks, living in monasteries on the flanks of the mountain and keeping Byzantine time, in which the day begins at sunset. First published in 1957. Small print

In these lively accounts of journeys with her more reluctant husband, agnostic Jill Dudley seeks ‘answers to impossibly difficult questions’ through encounters with the sites, people, festivals and beliefs associated with different religious traditions, both ancient and modern. The four titles included in this set are: Lap of the Gods (Read more...) Holy Smoke! (Read more...) Gods in Britain (Read more...) Ye Gods! (Read more...)

Spanning half the globe, from Britain and Europe, eastward to the coast of California, the map reproduced in shades of cream and grey on these textured cards dates from the era when Australia was ‘New Holland’ and India was ‘Hindoostan’. The map also lines the envelopes and covers the rigid, lidded box. Twelve cards with ungummed envelopes.

Stephen O’Shea overcomes his fear of heights to crest the high Alpine passes and explore the history of the ‘fearsome, gargantuan intrusion of stone inconveniently located not at the edge but square in the middle of Europe’. Travelling west to east, from Lake Geneva to Trieste, he tells the stories of the armies, Crusaders, pilgrims and traders who have crossed the mountains; how the Alps inspired the Romantics, mountaineers and engineers; and how its 1,599 peaks have divided Europe’s languages, cuisine, culture, religion and history. American-cut pages

For over a century, National Geographic teams have been travelling the globe and describing exotic sites in words and photographs. For this book, 50 places have been chosen as the most desired, but often challenging, places to visit. Arranged by continent, from Cappadocia in Asia to the Marquesas Islands in Oceania, the description and photographs of each place are accompanied by travel tips and a ‘Nat Geo Flashback’ to an early expedition or a ‘Classic Shot’ by one of the magazine’s photographers.

An expert on Britain’s architectural heritage and founder of the Railway Heritage Trust, Simon Jenkins presents an introductory history of the railway station and a personal selection of 100 buildings, chosen for their ‘architectural beauty, eccentricity or setting’. Beginning with the great London termini and ending at Wemyss Bay (‘a coherent work of art’), this richly illustrated volume is an erudite and engrossing survey of stations throughout England, Wales and Scotland, and the architects, engineers and railway companies that built them.

In 2002, shortly after the fall of the Taliban, Rory Stewart walked 300 miles through the remote highlands of Afghanistan. His account describes the landscape, society and his encounters with opium growers and mujahedin fighters. An afterword to this new edition reflects how more than a decade of foreign engagement has failed through a fundamental misunderstanding of the country’s traditions.

Walking a thousand miles or more along tracks and holloways, drove roads and seaways in England, Scotland and abroad, Macfarlane goes in search of ‘the ghosts and voices that haunt ancient paths’, but encounters both past and present in the landscape. A journey of the imagination as well as over land and sea, the book ranges across topics including sailing to the Shiants, the Calzada Romana in Spain and another walker of old roads, the poet Edward Thomas.

After meeting the Patriarch in Istanbul, Dudley journeys down Anatolia to Egypt, with its temples of ancient gods, and the monastery at Sinai, where she reflects on connections and conflicts between Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Jill Dudley once again hauls her long-suffering husband Harry through the ancient temples and Byzantine churches of Athens, Corinth and Corfu, and the hilltop monasteries of the Meteora, to discover what Greek Christianity inherited and adapted from paganism.

Beginning in Athens, this itinerary takes in sites across Greece, including Apollo’s birthplace on Delos, the ancient gods’ home atop Mount Olympus and the island of Patmos, where St John wrote the Book of Revelation. Slightly off-mint.

This quest to discover Britain’s ancient beliefs and legends takes the reader from Stonehenge and Glastonbury to Canterbury Cathedral, encountering Celtic and Roman gods, the Knights Templar, St Columba and the giants Gog and Magog.

This guide to islands that have never existed examines 24 products of imagination, deception and human error. Some have emerged from myth, others as phantoms, plain mysteries, or fakes. The island of Frisland was claimed as British territory by Elizabeth I but turned out not to exist, and there were fraudulent inventions such as Phelipeaux, in Lake Superior. Illustrator Katie Scott adorns the text with mythical beasts.

When the foreign correspondent Patricia Clough bought a house in Umbria, it was the beginning of a long and not always easy introduction to a region of green hills and ancient villages. This personal account records her growing understanding and appreciation of the area's history and culture, its landscapes and wildlife, its food and wine – and her tussles with its bureaucracy.

Alex Capus traces Robert Louis Stevenson's last years, focusing on his seemingly inexplicable decision to settle on Samoa. He concludes that Stevenson had discovered a real-life ‘Treasure Island’ nearby – and that it was this discovery that inspired his most famous work. Literary Traveller series.

The Stanfords Travel Classics series reprints the finest historical travel writing, including this trio of remarkable books: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879); Edith Wharton’s In Morocco (1920), an account of her journey from Rabat, via Fez to Marrakech at the end of the First World War; and Sailing Alone around the World (1900), in which Joshua Slocum tells the story of his 1895 circumnavigation in a 100-year-old rebuilt sloop.

With 180 images by 17 photographers, this catalogue of an exhibition at the Berlinische Galerie explores how photography has shaped perceptions of the world since staged tourist images were created in the late nineteenth century. From the photojournalism of Erich Salomon and Thomas Hoepker to the more abstract work of modern artists such as Wolfgang Tillmans, it explores how photographers have engaged with the debate about how social reality is depicted.

In his popular TV travel series, Michael Portillo followed 19th-century railway guides, tracing the history and development of each destination since their original publication. This historical companion to the BBC series focuses on the railways of America, telling the story of the first pioneers, engineering mavericks and tycoons and how the railroad helped to shape the country before and after the Civil War, and into the 20th century.

Against a backdrop of shattered monuments, neglected villas and ghostly backstreets, a daydreaming boy seeks refuge from family discord in the imagination. In this highly original memoir, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk interweaves his own life, and the lives of his glamorous, unhappy parents, with that of his home city. The result is a blend of family reminiscence, history, philosophy, literature, art criticism and urban myth. This edition contains a new introduction and more than 200 additional photographs.

Struggling to write a novel set in South America, John Hopkins decided to revisit the continent, travelling slowly by train, bus and river boat from Mexico City to Argentina, via Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay, savouring every experience along the way. The diary he kept is a vivid portrait of Latin America, a tequila-soaked chronicle of solitude and writer’s block, and an angst-ridden account of his troubled love for his travelling companion Madeleine.

Who were the Apostles and what was their relationship to Jesus? Was James the Less really his brother? This synthesis of travelogue and biblical history ranges from Rome and Jerusalem, Turkey and Russia to India and Kyrgyzstan to seek answers to these ancient enigmas. Exploring the way the identities of the Apostles have evolved over two millennia, Tom Bissell charts the growth of Christianity from an obscure sect to the global faith we know today.

Between 1929 and 1935 Evelyn Waugh travelled widely and wrote extensively about his experiences. This collection brings together his accounts of a Mediterranean cruise, and his travels in Abyssinia, Aden, Zanzibar, Kenya, the Congo, Guyana and Brazil. Written with his characteristic dry wit and perception, these reports contain the seeds of his classic novels Scoop and Black Mischief.

Nick Hunt narrates a journey on foot, watching the weather and listening to local lore, as he goes in search of Europe’s fiercest winds. He starts in the Pennines, walking to Cross Fell, to meet the demonic Helm, before travelling to Croatia and the Bora, the Föehn in the Alps and the Mistral in Provence.

For six months, Wood and his guides trekked along the foothills of the Himalayas, through Afghanistan, Kashmir and Nepal. His account of the 1,700-mile journey explores the region’s history, politics and the lives of its people, including yak-herders, separatist fighters, Buddhist monks and blood-drinking shamans. Off-mint.

Alastair Sawday’s love of adventure began as a teenager and led to a career as a bestselling author of travel guides. These personal sketches are infused with his passion for authenticity, for the quirks of humanity, culture and landscape. Peopled with eccentric guests and peculiar hoteliers, the stories range from the majesty of Venice to the lush valleys of Wales, and from a chaotic Spanish farmhouse to a Parisian café where the elderly waitresses perform the can-can.

Over the course of the last century, the English village has often been declared dead or dying. In this volume, ex-BBC journalist Tom Fort sets out to discover how these communities are really fairing. Fort approaches 6,000 years of history and his own experiences of rural life with wit and entertaining observations, and concludes that ‘the village as a model for communal living is simply too strong to fail’.

In this book lover’s tour of Britain, the Mail on Sunday’s travel editor embarks on a series of literary rambles through the towns and countryside immortalized by great writers, featuring Jane Austen’s Bath, Hardy’s Wessex, Wordsworth’s Lake District, Bram Stoker’s Whitby and Robert Burns’s birthplace in Alloway. Frank Barrett’s adventures, recounted with self-deprecating humour, include satnav errors, truculent tour guides and, of course, the British weather.

For five centuries Europeans sought a sea route to the Pacific through the Canadian Arctic, losing many ships and lives before Amundsen completed the crossing in 1906. Now global warming has thinned the sea ice, it is possible for tourists to make the trip. This illustrated guide provides both a history of the region and a valuable practical resource for visitors.

Tom Rodwell, Chairman of the Lord's Taverners, spent six years running charity cricket tours to help disadvantaged young people in some of the world's poorest districts. This book recounts his amusing adventures, from playing in cricket-mad cultures in Sri Lanka and Jamaica to unlikely locations such as Cuba and Israel.

Martin Garrett traces Oxford’s history from Anglo-Saxon ‘oxen-ford’ to the present, with chapters on its architecture, ‘town and gown’, and writers and religion; and goes beyond the city to surrounding places of interest including Blenheim Palace and White Horse Hill.

A former resident, Schürer explores the juxtaposition of Berlin’s past and present in history, architecture, the arts and entertainment, and religion, with a final chapter on the suburbs and Potsdam.

In chapters on the island’s physical, human and spiritual landscapes, and its history and culture, Arthur Cotterell explains why Bali is truly a unique ‘landscape of the imagination’.

Forced to give up her Irish adventure after the tragic death of her beloved pony Mollie, Bradt returns a few weeks later determined to complete her journey. After a rocky start with Peggy, the new pony, the pair bond and the adventure continues with new faces and beautiful landscapes.

Hilary Bradt, travel writer and co-founder of Bradt Travel Guides, fulfils a childhood dream by heading to Ireland, buying a horse and trotting round the country. This book, written 30 years later, tells the first part of her 1,000-mile journey with the help of her original diaries.

A writer and activist involved in issues including land reform, globalization and non-violence, Alastair McIntosh returned to the islands of the Outer Hebrides – Harris and his native Lewis – on a twelve-day, 60-mile journey of pilgrimage in 2009. This book is an account of the rigours of his journey; the people, landscape and ancient relics he encountered; stories from the islands’ history and lore; and thoughts of his own past and present.

Hay-on-Wye is world famous as ‘the town of books’. But when the travel writer Oliver Balch moved there, it was its people he was keen to read. With empathy and humour, he joins in the daily routines of his fellow residents; young farmers, elderly widows, mayors, hippies and publicans. What emerges is a captivating personal picture of country life in the 21st century.

Paris, the City of Lights, has always had its dark side: a city of the poor, the outcast, the criminal, the eccentric and the nonconformist. Illustrated with more than 300 historic images, this journey through its dance halls and whorehouses, its absinthe bars and hobo shelters, finds their traces in the bricks and stones of the modern city, revealing lives that were a far cry from those of the haute bourgeoisie.

What is it about snow that leaves us spellbound? What draws us to play with it, sledge over it, and even risk our lives in it? In this finely woven blend of memoir, history and travelogue, self-confessed snow obsessive Charlie English wraps up warm and goes in search of the answers to these questions, from the Cairngorms to Vermont, from Chamonix to the Canadian Arctic.

In 1925 the young American architect Barry Dierks and his lover Eric Sawyer built Le Trident, a Modernist home at Miramar on the Côte d’Azur. Word of Barry’s talent spread, and the commissions that followed propelled them into the heart of Riviera society, with clients including Somerset Maugham and the Marquess of Cholmondeley. This biography recalls Barry and Eric’s time with their glamorous circle of friends, contrasting the lifestyle of the Jazz Age with the hardships that were to come under German occupation.

Selected by the late AA Gill himself, these recent pieces show one of the finest journalists of our time at his most perceptive, brilliant and funny. He tackles life-drawing, designs his own tweed, spends a day at Donald Trump’s university, and contemplates his cancer diagnosis. Above all, he addresses that most urgent of contemporary issues, the refugee crisis, reporting from Lampedusa, Lebanon and Calais with anger and compassion.

Cadiz, the Azores, Sweden and Russia, Chile, Peru and Rio de Janeiro are just some of the destinations of the Yankee sea captain George Coggeshall and his letters-of-marque schooners. This volume is the third edition of his very popular journals. Originally published in 1858. Slightly off-mint, musty smell due to long storage and no jacket.

(Off-mint) May smell slightly musty due to long storage.

Simon Gandolfi first visited India in the 1960s, driving a VW to Goa, where he met and fell in love with Vanessa. Forty years later, fury at the terrorist attacks on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai leads him to return, this time on a Honda 125. Gandolfi’s unique and charming travelogue interweaves the two trips, combining bittersweet memories of the past with a window on the India of today.

This volume contains the Journal of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra (1775); the Journal of Commander Pringle Stokes on HMS Beagle in the Strait of Magellan (1827), the Journal of Midshipman Joseph Henry Kay on HMS Chanticleer, 1828–31, and Jacob Wainwright’s Diary of the Transportation of Dr Livingstone’s Body to the Coast (1873–4).

After selecting 16 peaks which are among Britain’s wildest and emptiest places, Ingram devoted more than a year to exploring them. Here he records what happened on his expedition, following a circuitous route from Beinn Dearg to Ben Nevis via the Brecon Beacons, Pennines and Lake District. As well as discussing the practicalities of the climbs, he describes each mountain’s unique atmosphere and delves into its history and folklore. Slightly off-mint.

Top of the Lonely Planet's list of the world's unsung places, Trieste is almost cut off from Italy, by geography and history. This Omaggio a.. volume shows the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when it was a great cosmopolitan centre for art and literature. The book contains around 80 sepia tone photographs with captions, and a short introduction. Texts are in Italian and English.

The prizewinning novelist Erik Orsenna grew up on an island off the coast of Brittany, giving thanks to the Atlantic current that brings warmth to the shores of Europe. In this remarkable book, he follows the Gulf Stream from Cape Hatteras to the legendary Norwegian Maelstrom, meeting scientists and scholars in an attempt to understand the phenomenon, its influence on culture and climate and whether global warming will stop its flow.

Travelling across London by canal boat, from Walthamstow Marsh to the suburbs of Uxbridge, Helen Babbs witnessed abundant wildlife, and the impact of seasonal changes and developers on the city’s landscapes. In this blend of nature writing, social observation and memoir she recalls the practical challenges of her year-long journey, as well as the unusual perspective it offered her, to create a unique portrait of the capital’s history, politics and people.