Travel & Geography

In The Rare Book Room

Explore the World of Collectable Travel Books

Our feet were made for walking. Our eyes for observing. And our hands for writing. Travel and literature have gone together for centuries. Pack your bags with any of these classic travel titles that bring the sights, sounds, and tastes of faraway lands closer to home.

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Editor's Picks

Adventures on the High Teas: In Search of Middle England

Stuart Maconie

Everyone talks about 'Middle England'. Sometimes they mean something bad, like a lynch mob of tabloid readers, and sometimes they mean something good, like a pint of ale in a sleepy Cotswold village. But just where and what is Middle England? Stuart Maconie didn't know either, so he packed his Thermos and sandwiches and set off to find out...Is Middle England about tradition and decency or closed minds and bigotry? Is it maypoles and evensong, or flooded market towns and binge drinkers? Does it hark back to the myth of Merrie England or is it a modern concept borne of Top Gear and Princess Diana? Stuart Maconie leads an expedition by rail and road - via Carnforth and Adelstrop, Scratchwood and Tebay - in search of Jane Austen's Bath, Disgusted's Tunbridge Wells, Tom & Barbara Good's Surbiton, Betjeman and Brent's Slough, Elgar's Malverns, Inspector Barnaby's Midsomer and Thatcher's Grantham - with plenty of stop-offs for tea and pastries along the way. Find This Book

 

The Secret Life of France

Lucy Wadham

Lucy Wadham’s first work of non-fiction is a candid and funny account of her long and tumultuous love affair with France, her adoptive land. At the age of eighteen Wadham ran away from English boys - who she found emotionally immature and sexually unconfident - and into the arms of a Frenchman. She soon discovered that romantic relationships in France were fraught with their own set of problems: not only do the French put women on a pedestal, but both sexes are required to act out the sort of seduction games that disappeared from English society centuries ago. Wadham, who dressed in Doc Martens and baggy jumpers, struggled to fit in.

Twenty-five years later, having married in a French Catholic church, put her children through the French education system and divorced in a French court of law, Wadham examines the profound and varied differences between the Anglo-Saxon and French worldviews. Using her own experience, as a wife and mother, and later as an investigative journalist for the BBC, Wadham explores French attitudes towards sex, marriage, adultery, money, work, happiness, war and race, and in so doing reveals much about our own priorities and the nature of our identity. Find This Book

Other Travel Books You May Enjoy

• Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain
  Matthew Engel
• Race to the Pole
  James Cracknell, Ben Fogle
• A Coast to Coast Walk: A Pictorial Guide
  Alfred Wainwright
• New York City
  Lonely Planet City Guide
• The Most Amazing Places to Visit in Britain
  Michael Davison