The award winning travel writer Dervla Murphy turns 90 on Sunday 28th November. Stanfords wishes her a very happy birthday.
Dervla Murphy has won worldwide praise for her writing and has been described as a ‘travel legend’ and ‘the First Lady of Irish cycling’. In March she joined Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron and Paul Theroux and became a recipient of the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.
Dervla Murphy was born in Lismore, Co. Waterford in 1931 where she still lives today. Her first book, Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle, was published in 1965. In it she describes her exuberant bicycle ride from Lismore to India, through Iran and Afghanistan. Over twenty travel books have followed including her highly-acclaimed autobiography, Wheels Within Wheels.
A constant favourite at Stanfords, Dervla’s books have remained best sellers since they were first placed on our shelves. Through her writing, Dervla continues to inspire readers of all ages to travel.
Travel the world with Dervla Murphy through our recommended reads:
Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle (1965)
£12.99
In 1963 Dervla fulfils her childhood dream of cycling from Lismore, County Waterford to India. This book gives a great insight into the political state of affairs in the 1960s and shows what an adventurous life can result from giving a ten-year-old child a bicycle and an atlas.
Tibetan Foothold (1966)
£12.99
Dervla vividly describes day-to-day life in the camps where hundreds of children are living in squalor while a handful of dedicated volunteers do their best to feed and care for them, attempting to keep disease at bay with limited resources. She pitches in with a helping hand wherever it is needed and finds time to visit the Dalai Lama and his entourage.
The Waiting Land – A Spell in Nepal (1967)
£12.99
Dervla Murphy affectionately portrays the people of Nepal’s different tribes, the customs of an ancient, complex civilization and the country’s natural grandeur and beauty. In diary form, she describes her various journeys by air, by bicycle and on foot into the remote and mountainous Lantang region on the border of Tibet.
In Ethiopia With A Mule (1968)
£12.99
In 1966 Dervla Murphy travelled the length and breadth of Ethopia, first on a mule, Jock, whom she named after her publisher, and later on a recalcitrant donkey. The remarkable achievement was not just surviving three armed robberies or the thousand-mile trail, but the gradual growth of affection for and understanding of another race.
On a Shoestring to Coorg: An Experience of Southern India (1976)
£12.99
Dervla Murphy and her daughter Rachel with little money, no taste for luxury and few concrete plans meander their way slowly south from Bombay to the southernmost point of India, Cape Comorin. Instead of pressing ever onwards, like so many travellers, they double back to the place they liked most, the hill province of Coorg and settle down to live there for two months.
A Place Apart: Northern Ireland in the 1970s (1978)
£13.99
Dervla cycles into the mayhem of Northern Ireland to try and sort out her own opinions about this troubled land. Frequently finding herself in horrifying situations, and sometimes among people stiff with hate and grief: but equally, she discovered an unquenchable spirit everywhere that refused to die.
Wheels Within Wheels (1979)
£12.99
In this beautifully written and searingly honest autobiography, Murphy remembers her richly unconventional first 30 years. She describes her childhood, her intermittent formal education and the relationship with her parents. Bicycling fifty miles in a day at the age of 11, alone, it seems only natural that her first major journey should have been to cycle to India.
Eight Feet in the Andes (1983)
£9.99
The eight feet belong to Dervla Murphy, her nine-year-old daughter Rachel, and Juana, an elegant mule, who together clambered the length of Peru. In this extraordinary adventure, Dervla Murphy is at her intrepid best, facing up to the terrors, horrors and joys of her journey along the mountain paths.
Silverland – A Writer’s Journey Beyond The Urals (2006)
£10.99
Travelling by slow train from Moscow to the Russian Far East, Murphy journeys through the world’s most desolate and beautiful mountain ranges. While her less fortunate encounters included a bear and armed robbers, she also experiences great hospitality from the local people who openly share tales of their own life stories over a samovar of sweet tea.
The Island That Dared – Journeys in Cuba (2008)
£14.99
Dervla Murphy investigates the experience of modern Cuba with her unique candid curiosity. Through her own research and through conversations with Fidelistas and their critics alike, she builds a complex picture of a people struggling to retain their identity in the face of insistent American hostility.
A Month by the Sea: Encounters in Gaza (2013)
£12.99
Over the summer of 2011, Dervla Murphy spent a month in the Gaza Strip.What she finds are a people who, far from the story we are so often fed, overwhelmingly long for peace and an end to the violence that has so grossly distorted their lives.
Between River and Sea: Encounters in Israel and Palestine (2015)
£14.99
Dervla Murphy describes with passionate honesty the experience of living among Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in both Israel and Palestine. Behind the book lies a desire to communicate the reality of life on the ground, and to puzzle out for herself what might be done to alleviate the suffering of all who wish to share this land and to make peace in the region a possibility.
An extract from the 2021 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards of Dervla Murphy accepting her Edward Stanford Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing Award and friends congratulating her: