Our Book of the Month for April 2024 is Taking the Risk: My Adventures in Travel and Publishing by founder of Bradt Guides, former recipient of the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing and friend of Stanfords, Hilary Bradt.
Hilary Bradt signing copies of Taking the Risk
In Taking the Risk Hilary Bradt looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters… and success. From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset.
Barely into her twenties, Hilary thumbed lifts around the Middle East for three months before spending four years working and travelling in the US. Between 1973 and 1976 she explored, and worked in, South America and Africa with her then husband George, often journeying through literally uncharted territory in their quest to find new hiking routes. The discovery of an ancient trail to Machu Picchu unexpectedly inspired their first guidebook. From 1977 the pair wrote several backpacking guides, and set up Bradt Guides.
Join Hilary as she relives in detail the rigours of travel before the days of the internet or mobile phones, including smuggling her husband across an international border and frequently getting arrested despite efforts to be responsible tourists. Learn how Hilary’s lack of experience made the early days of publishing quite unlike those of any other successful publisher. Laugh (or cry) at Hilary’s ability to court media disasters while seeking the limelight, including waving around condoms on BBC TV.
SIGNED COPIES of Taking the Risk: My Adventures in Travel and Publishing are available now for £20
Hilary Bradt co-founded Bradt Guides in 1974 with her then-husband, George, and now lives in Devon, indulging her interest in sculpting as well as writing regular press articles and Bradt books. She is the recipient of an MBE for contributions to tourism, the British Guild of Travel Writers’ Lifetime Achievement Award, the Edward Stanford Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing award, and the Travel Media Awards’ Special Contribution Award.