Place, Culture & Destination Writing

Following A Month by the Sea, her acclaimed exploration of life in Gaza, Dervla Murphy describes with passionate honesty the experience of living with and among Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in both Israel and Palestine. In cra…

For over 300 years, Japan closed itself to outsiders, developing a remarkable and unique culture. During its period of isolation, the inhabitants of the city of Edo, later known as Tokyo, relied on its public bells to tell the tim…

A rich blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, laced with the thread of black comedy familiar to readers of William Dalrymple's previous work. In AD 587, two monks, John Moschos and Sophronius the Sophist, embar…

The Sea Area Forecast is broadcast daily on RTÉ radio at 6 a.m. and midnight. Foretelling fair days or fierce storms coming in across our seas, it has become a national institution - its hypnotic, rhythmic language as reassuring a…

Once we thought monsters lived there. In the Enlightenment we scaled them to commune with the sublime.Soon, we were racing to conquer their summits in the name of national pride. In this ground-breaking, classic work, Robert Macfa…

This is the story of three unheralded nineteenth-century dissidents, whose lives were profoundly shaped by the winds of empire, nationalism and autocracy that continue to blow strongly today: Louise Michel, a leader of the radical…

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, from Cajamarca near the border with Ecuador, to Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital, over…

Through Siberia by Accident is a book about a journey that didn't happen - and what happened instead. Dervla Murphy never had any intention of spending three months in the vast territories of Siberia. Instead she had planned to go…

One woman, one bike and one richly entertaining, perception-altering journey of discovery. In 2015, as the Syrian War raged and the refugee crisis reached its peak, Rebecca Lowe set off on her bicycle across the Middle East. Drive…

What do the Greek myths mean to us today? It's now a golden age for these tales - they crop up in novels, films and popular culture.But what's the modern relevance of Theseus, Hera and Pandora? Were these stories ever meant for ch…

Journey through the imagined islands of history.  Gathered in this book are over twenty islands that have decidedly human origins, whether they are the products of imagination, deception or simply human error. They are phantoms, f…

Geert Mak spent the year 1999 criss-crossing the continent, tracing the history of Europe from Verdun to Berlin, St Petersburg to Auschwitz, Kiev to Srebrenica. He set off in search of evidence and witnesses, looking to define the…

In this book Geert Mak returns to the small Frisian village of his childhood, Jorwert (pop. 330 and falling). It's a typical European village where the shops are closing down, the few children left will escape to a less arduous li…

In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns and cities from New York to New Orleans.The trip became Travels With Charley, one of his best-l…

The Places In Between is Rory Stewart's moving account of his death-defying walk across war-torn Afghanistan in January 2002. Now with illustrations and an afterword. Caught between hostile nations, warring factions and competing …

Sad Topographies is an illustrated guide for the melancholic among us. Dispirited travellers rejoice as Damien Rudd journeys across continents in search of the world's most joyless place names and their fascinating etymologies. Be…

Stroll around some of the greatest cities in the world and discover what they were like a century ago at the start of the modern age. Explore 100 routes around 15 different cities at the turn of the 20th century thanks to a millio…

Join writer and podcaster Roisin Ingle on a journey to the most-loved locations of thirty of Ireland's most extraordinary personalities, as they share stories of why their perfect place in Ireland means so much to them. Including …

Alev Scott's odyssey began when she looked beyond Turkey's borders for contemporary traces of the Ottoman Empire. Their 800-year rule ended a century ago - and yet, travelling through twelve countries from Kosovo to Greece to Pale…

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 surviving three armed robberies o…

This is the first travel book that tested the idea that a five-year-old daughter makes for a useful international travelling companion. Together Dervla Murphy and her daughter Rachel with little money, no taste for luxury and few …

Dervla Murphy's first epic journey from Ireland to India by bicycle, "Full Tilt", is a complete adventure in itself. It is also the first volume of a trilogy of experience that continues with Tibetan Foothold. For the young Irish …

In "The Waiting Land" (first published in 1967) 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. This is t…

A first-hand account of the life of travel writer Dervla Murphy in which she tells of her early life in Lismore, Co. Waterford, in her rather unusual household. Her father was the county librarian and her mother a chronic invalid.…

A Place Apart is a remarkable geographical and psychological travelogue that rises above history, politics, theology and economics. Created by a southern Irishwoman, cycling into the mayhem of Northern Ireland in order to try and …

Over the summer of 2011, Dervla Murphy spent a month in the Gaza Strip. She met liberals and Islamists, Hamas and Fatah supporters, rich and poor. Used to western reporters dashing in and out of the Strip in times of crisis, the p…

The gripping true story of one man's ten year expedition from a village in West Africa to the Arctic Circle.   Scorching heat, rich, fertile soil, and treacherous snakes marked the landscape in which Tete-Michel grew up in 1950s T…

For readers of The Salt Path, Mudlarking, Ghostland, Kathleen Jamie and Robert Macfarlane. Enter a grave new world of fascination and delight as award-winning writer Peter Ross uncovers the stories and glories of graveyards. Who a…

This is the tale of an epic three-month adventure through unexplored jungle terrain - and it might even change your lifeFuelled by a zest for life and the desire to explore the world around her, Pip Stewart took on a world-first c…

How did the great European dream turn sour? And where do we go from here? From the author of the internationally acclaimed In Europe, a stunning history of our present, examining the first two decades of this most fragile and frau…