One Man In His Time
17 April '14
The Marsh Arabs
17 April '14
Wilfred Thesiger’s classic account of the eight years he spent living with the tribespeople of the Marshes of Iraq. First published in 1964 to great acclaim, this book by one of the century’s greatest explorers describes a way of life which lasted for thousands of years, but has now all but vanished. Travelling with his […]
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
29 January '14
Hashish: A Smuggler’s Tale
29 January '14
Nobleman, writer, adventurer and inspiration for the swashbuckling gun runner in the Adventures of Tintin, Henri de Monfried lived by his own account ‘a rich, restless, magnificent life’ as one of the great travellers of his or any age. Infamous as well as famous, his name is inextricably linked to the Red Sea and the […]
Old Serpent Nile
29 January '14
An unforgettable journey through Egypt, Sudan and Uganda to the source of the great river Nile. stanley stewart is the winner of the 1996 thomas cook/daily telegraph travel book award. Inspired by a dream ‘of boats and currents, of narrow riverbanks and wide savannas, and of the long, uncoiling river leading to the heart of […]
Sold
29 January '14
Zana Muhsen, born and bred in Birmingham, is of Yemeni origin. When her father told her she was to spend a holiday with relatives in North Yemen, she jumped at the chance. Aged 15 and 13 respectively, Zana and her sister discovered that they had been literally sold into marriage, and that on their arrival […]
Mezzaterra
29 January '14
“Globalisation is happening. It is driven by economics, ideology and communications. But does this have to entail the annexation of chunks of the world by the Great Power of any given moment? Surely that is the path to constant conflict, to grief and misery. There is another way: to inhabit and broaden the common ground. […]
Woman in the Crossfire, A
29 January '14
A well-known novelist and journalist from the coastal city of Jableh, Samar Yazbek witnessed the beginning four months of the uprising first-hand and actively participated in a variety of public actions and budding social movements. Throughout this period she kept a diary of personal reflections on, and observations of, this historic time. Because of the […]
Cleopatra’s Wedding Present: Travels Through Syria
29 January '14
Though Syria has begun to open itself up to the foreign traveller, for many of us it remains a sinister and forbidding destination. Syria’s monumentally unwelcoming state apparatus – and its fraught politics – could defeat even the most determined adventurer. As the idlest and most easy-going of explorers, Robert Tewdwr Moss side-steps danger to […]