Jude Brosnan

‘Pages From My Passport’ with Amelia Dalton: Stanfords Travel Writers Festival 2024

From Destinations: The Holiday & Travel Show in London’s Olympia, The Stanfords Travel Writers Festival welcomes author and ‘travel tailor’ Amelia Dalton. She talks to Ann Morgan about her book Pages From My Passport and her many adventures.

Amelia Dalton, fresh from touring the Scottish islands, takes on the world and sets up exclusive, expedition holidays in remote places for a new cruise ship. She scopes out remote archipelagos, deserted beaches and tiny local museums from Norway to Madagascar, by campervan, taxi, boat and small plane. While planning her itineraries, she explores inaccessible islands, survives a hotel fire, a bomb in a palace, being stung by a scorpion and thrown into jail. Meanwhile, she’s being wooed from afar by a mysterious stranger who turns up in the most unexpected places.

‘High Caucasus’ with Tom Parfitt: Stanfords Travel Writers Festival 2024

From Destinations: The Holiday & Travel Show in London’s Olympia, The Stanfords Travel Writers Festival welcomes The Times Russia correspondent Tom Parfitt. He talks to Ann Morgan about his Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year shortlisted book ‘High Caucasus’ and discusses his deep ties to the area.

On 1 September 2004, Chechen and Ingush militants took more than a thousand people captive at a school in the Caucasus region of southern Russia. Working as a correspondent, Tom Parfitt witnessed the bloody climax in which 314 hostages died, more than half of them children. The experience left Tom emotionally shredded, struggling to find a way to return to his life in Moscow and put to rest the ghosts of the Beslan siege.

‘The Making of the Middle East’ with Barnaby Rogerson: Stanfords Travel Writers Festival 2024

From Destinations: The Holiday & Travel Show in London’s Olympia, The Stanfords Travel Writers Festival welcomes author and publisher Barnaby Rogerson. He talks to Clare Clark about his book The House Divided: Sunni, Shia and the Making of the Middle East.

At the heart of the Middle East, with its regional conflicts and proxy wars, is a 1400-year-old schism between Sunni and Shia. To understand this divide and its modern resonances, we need to revisit its origins, which go back to the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, the accidental coup that set aside the claims of his son Ali, and the slaughter of Ali’s own son Husayn at Kerbala. These events, known to every Muslim, have created a slender faultline in the Middle East.

‘The Story of Scandinavia’ with Stein Ringen: Stanfords Travel Writers Festival 2024

From Destinations: The Holiday & Travel Show in London’s Olympia, The Stanfords Travel Writers Festival welcomes Norwegian sociologist and political scientist Stein Ringen. He talks to Ann Morgan about his book The Story of Scandinavia.

In The Story of Scandinavia, Stein Ringen chronicles more than 1,200 years of drama, economic rise and fall, crises, kings and queens, war, peace, language and culture.

Map of the Month: Gran Canaria Tour & Trail Super-Durable Map

Our February Map of the Month is the Gran Canaria Tour and Trail Super-Durable Map.

One of the most popular destinations with our customers during the end of winter is the Spanish island of Gran Canaria. It is the third-largest and second-most-populous island of the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the Atlantic coast of Northwest Africa. This island is called a “miniature continent” due to the different climates and variety of landscapes found. It has so much to offer with long beaches and dunes of white sand, contrasting with green ravines and picturesque villages.

Children’s Book of the Month: Green

Our Children’s Book of the Month for February is Green: The Story of Plant Life on Our Planet by Nicola Davies illustrated by Emily Sutton

This tree doesn’t look like it’s doing very much: it just stands there in the sunlight, big and green. But this tree is busy…

Starting with the secret workings of a tree, this book transports readers billions of years into the past; back to the moment when plant life first appeared on our planet. Covering its evolution, the steady emergence of fossil fuels and the extraordinary communities of plants around the world today, Nicola Davies and Emily Sutton combine essential biology with a powerful message, calling on readers to celebrate and cherish the most precious colour on Earth: green.

Book of the Month: The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

Our Book of the Month for February is The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Bettany Hughes.

Children’s Book of the Month: Lonely Planet Create Your Own Travel Journal

Our January Children’s Book of the Month is the Lonely Planet Kids Create Your Own Travel Journal.

Make your vacation memories last a lifetime with this awesome fill-in children’s travel journal that’s packed with brilliant activities and prompts to inspire kids to write and draw their adventures. Budding diarists can record precious moments from their trip in this pocket-sized book and create the ultimate holiday souvenir to cherish forever.

Book of the Month: Local

Our first Book of the Month for 2024 is Local: A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness by the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award winning author Alastair Humphreys.

Escape into the overlooked adventures and insights from one man’s year of deeply exploring a 20km map of suburban England.

What surprises might you uncover in your own neighbourhood if you set aside assumptions and paid closer attention? After two decades of grand expeditions spanning the globe, Adventurer Alastair Humphreys embarked on a project to get to know his uninspiring corner of England through undertaking weekly microadventures within one local map.

Map of the Month: The Great Indian Railway Atlas

Our Map of the Month for January 2024 is the brand new edition of The Great Indian Railway Atlas with design and cartography by Samit Roychoudhury, published by Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society.

As more and more travellers are reverting back to rail travel in an attempt to leave less of a carbon footprint, this form of transport is becoming a favoured form. Add to that the fact that India’s railway network is very impressive and there is something so romantic about travelling across a country by train, and it’s no surprise that train traveller numbers are booming.

Stanfords Travel Trivia: