Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles £14.99
Our Book of the Month for August, from the winner of the Nan Shepherd Prize, takes us from London to New Zealand, Shanghai to Malaysia via a lyrical, poetic essay collection that blends memoir with powerful writing on the natural world.
Home is many people and places and languages, some separated by oceans.
Continue reading Book of the Month: Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya PowlesMinarets in the Mountains: A Journey into Muslim Europe by Tharik Hussain £9.99
In our Book of the Month for July, Londoner Tharik Hussain sets off with his wife and young daughters around the Western Balkans, home to the largest indigenous Muslim population in Europe, and explores the regions of Eastern Europe where Islam has shaped places and people for more than half a millennium. Encountering blonde-haired, blue-eyed Muslims, visiting mystical Islamic lodges clinging to the side of mountains, and praying in mosques older than the Sistine Chapel, he paints a picture of a hidden Muslim Europe, a vibrant place with a breathtaking history, spellbinding culture and unique identity.
Minarets in The Mountains, the first English travel narrative by a Muslim writer on this subject, also explores the historical roots of European Islamophobia. Tharik and his family learn lessons about themselves and their own identity as Britons, Europeans and Muslims. Following in the footsteps of renowned Ottoman traveller Evliya Celebi, they remind us that Europe is as Muslim as it is Christian, Jewish or pagan.
Like William Dalrymple’s In Xanadu, this is a vivid reimagining of a region’s cultural heritage, unveiling forgotten Muslim communities, empires and their rulers; and like Kapka Kassabova’s Border, it is a quest that forces us to consider what makes up our own identities, and more importantly, who decides?
Watch Tharik Hussain introduce Minarets in the Mountains.
Acclaimed travel writer Nick Hunt joins Peter from Stanfords Bristol to talk about his latest book and the Stanfords Book of the Month for June 2021, Outlandish: Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes.
Arctic tundra in Scotland, jungle in Poland, desert in Spain and steppe in Hungary: places acting as portals in time and space. These are landscapes brimming with story, mystery and a sense of deep history. But they also offer us glimpses of a world not yet here, one perhaps just around the corner.
In our Book of the Month for June, Outlandish: Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes acclaimed travel writer Nick Hunt takes us across landscapes that should not be there, wildernesses found in Europe yet seemingly belonging to far-off continents: a patch of Arctic tundra in Scotland; the continent’s largest surviving remnant of primeval forest in Poland and Belarus; Europe’s only true desert in Spain; and the fathomless grassland steppes of Hungary.
Continue reading Book of the Month: Outlandish by Nick HuntIn our Book of the Month for May, I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain, Anita Sethi invites us on journey of reclamation through the natural landscapes of the North, brilliantly exploring identity, nature, place and belonging. Beautifully written and truly inspiring, I Belong Here heralds a powerful and refreshing new voice in nature writing.
Continue reading Book of the Month: I Belong Here by Anita Sethiby Tom Chesshyre
Tom Chesshyre took to Spain’s clickety-clack railway lines for a 3,000-mile adventure on 52 rides described in his new travel book and our Book of the Month for April, Slow Trains Around Spain. Here is a taster of his journey:
Continue reading Slow trains coming…Between soaring mountains, across arid deserts, parched plains and valleys of fruit orchards and olive groves, down glittering coastlines and along viaducts towering above plunging ravines – there is no better way to see Spain than by train.
In our Book of the Month for April, Slow Trains Around Spain: A 3,000- Mile Adventure on 52 Rides Tom Chesshyre hits the tracks to take in the UK’s most popular travel destination through carriage windows on a series of clattering rides beyond the popular image of ‘holiday Spain’ (although he stops by in Benidorm and Torremolinos too). Heading wherever the trains take him in a big S-shape around the country, Tom slips into the rhythm of the tracks meeting characters aplenty along the way. From hidden spots in Catalonia, through the plains of Aragon and across the north coast to Santiago de Compostela, his journey takes him onward via Madrid, the wilds of Extremadura, dusty mining towns, the cathedrals and palaces of Valencia and Granada, and finally to Seville, Andalusia’s beguiling (and hot) capital.
Continue reading Book of the Month: Slow Trains Around Spain by Tom ChesshyreBack by popular demand, Stanfords Book of the Month for March celebrates many different types of walks.
Follow the footsteps of writers, artists and musicians in this carefully researched collection of walking routes covering every continent, state, province and territory. Accompanied by full-colour photography and illustrated maps, 500 Walks with Writers, Artists and Musicians takes a culture trip through a series of inspiring strolls, treks and hikes in accessible countryside, national parks, remote wilderness and the great cities of the world.
Continue reading Book of the Month: 500 Walks with Writers, Artists and MusiciansExtracted from Red Sands by Caroline Eden (Quadrille, £26) Photography © Ola O. Smit and Theodore Kaye.
In the shattered rear-view mirror, the land was pink from the rising sun. The fractured looking glass rendered the desert view, mainly sand dunes, scrub and small hills, broken and repetitive. On the road, between the cities of Bukhara and Khiva – some stretches good, others badly potholed – there was a sense of slowly evaporating, of being dwarfed by the Kyzylkum (‘red sand’) Desert.
Continue reading Red Sands: Reportage and Recipes Through Central Asia, from Hinterland to HeartlandOur April Book of the Month Roam Alone: Inspiring Tales by Reluctant Solo Travellers is a collection of travel experiences from cycling in Shetland to power cuts in Laos by a number of writers.
We asked one of the writers, Hannah Stuart-Leach to share some tips for the reluctant solo traveller: Continue reading 5 tips for the reluctant solo traveller by Hannah Stuart-Leach
