Travel Memoir Books

At the age of twenty-three, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado set out from their native Argentina to explore their continent, with only a single 1939 Norton motorcycle to carry them, nicknamed La Poderosa ('the …

Mike Timms has always been a wanderer – into the bundu ('back of beyond') as a child in 1950s Kenya, around Dublin during his college years and along pilgrim paths in Wicklow and southern France as he approached the end of his wor…

In 1989, Irish doctor Geraldine Osborne, her artist husband Danny, and their three young children—ages five, two, and one—embarked on an extraordinary adventure: to spend a year living in one of the most isolated parts of the worl…

The wonderful new book from Britain's best-loved travel writer. In February 2025, Michael Palin travelled to Venezuela to get a sense of what life is like in one of South America's most culturally rich, vibrant but also troubled n…

Adventure awaits in this new visual odyssey from Accidentally Wes Anderson, taking listeners on stunning trips to every continent and sharing oddly moving human tales along the way. For lovers of travel, design, and exploration, A…

After a live performance at the Hollywood Bowl, The Pythons made their last performance together in 1983 in the hugely successful MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE. Writing and acting in films and television then took over much of Mi…

From London via Paris, Naples, Nuremberg, the Swiss Alps, Budapest, Athens and into the furthest corners of Eastern Europe across Romania and Bulgaria, join Tom Chesshyre on his fascinating journey to Istanbul and backEver dreamt …

In The City and the World, Gregor Hens explores the city in the twenty-first century – a space we shape and are shaped by in turn – and our place within it. Travelling from Berlin to Las Vegas, Shenzhen to Santiago de Chile, he mo…

Campaigner, publisher and wanderer Alastair Sawday has spent his life travelling. En route he has unearthed a multitude of stories - stories of people ploughing their own furrows, of travellers' tales, stories from the 'front line…

Dom Joly sets off on his travels again, immersing himself in the strange world of conspiracies. On his journeys he meets conspiracy theorists galore in destinations all over the world, some famous, some rather less so. Conspiracy …

An essential guide to one of the world’s most remarkable, and often misunderstood, cities by the author of Why the Dutch Are Different. When Ben Coates injures his leg and needs to rebuild his strength by walking, he finds himself…

William Dalrymple, who wrote so magically about India in ‘City of Djinns’, returns to the country in a series of remarkable essays. Featured in its pages are 15-year-old guerrilla girls and dowager Maharanis; flashy Bombay drinks …

Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year Award 2024. Tim Hannigan undertakes an epic east–west journey on foot through his own homeland, from the woodlands of the Tamar Valley to the remote western region of Pen…

Being a Rambling Man was what I always wanted to be, to live the way I damn well pleased. I've met the weirdest and most wonderful people who walk the Earth, seen the most bizarre and the most fantastic sights - and I've rarely co…

From the time, many years ago, when Michael Palin first heard that his grandfather had a brother, Harry, he was determined to find out more about him. The quest that followed involved hundreds of hours of painstaking detective wor…

When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he about to be the most quickly fired English tea…

On November 21, 1961, Michael C. Rockefeller, the twenty-three-year-old son of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, vanished off the coast of southwest New Guinea when his boat capsized. He was on a collecting expedition for the …

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author and feminist icon - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos. Nancy Spain was one of t…

'I took seven years over this work, spent all I had, my time, money and energy. Part of the journey was a green riot and part a deathly bleakness. I got ill, I got well. I went to the freedom fighters of West Papua and sang my hea…

And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t hold him, but it did lure him back.After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical sm…

A journey along the greatest land route on earth, from the master of travel writing Colin Thubron On buses, donkey carts, trains, jeeps and camels, Colin Thubron traces the drifts of the first great trade route out of the heart of…

Jonathan Raban's enthralling journey into the history of the Great Plains of Montana - the least populated, most uncharted region of the United States - to uncover the heart and soul of the country. Bringing to life the extraordin…

Over two decades of turmoil and change in the Middle East, steered via the history-soaked landscape of Palestine. This new edition includes a previously unpublished epigraph in the form of a walk. When Raja Shehadeh first started …

From the author of the Samuel Johnson prize shortlisted 'The Return of a King', this is William Dalrymple's captivating memoir of a year spent in Delhi, a city watched over and protected by the mischievous invisible djinns. Lodgin…

Among the Russians is a marvellous account of a solitary journey by car from St. Petersburg and the Baltic States south to Georgia and Armenia. A gifted writer and intrepid traveller, Thubron grapples with the complexities of Russ…

Having learned Mandarin, and travelling alone by foot, bicycle and train, Colin Thubron set off on a 10,000 mile journey from Beijing to the borders of Burma. He travelled through the wind-swept wastes of the Gobi desert and finis…

One of the most successful, influential and acclaimed travel books of recent years from the author of 'Return of a King', which has been shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize. At the age of twenty-two, William Dalrymple left hi…

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…