Travel Memoir Books

Sir Ranulph Fiennes has travelled to the most dangerous and inaccessible places on Earth, almost died countless times, lost nearly half his fingers to frostbite, raised millions of pounds for charity and been awarded a polar medal…

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…

In 1968, Vashti Bunyan gave up everything and everybody she knew in London to take to the road with a horse, wagon, dog, guitar and her then partner. They made the long journey up to the Outer Hebrides in an odyssey of discovery a…

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…

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 …

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…

A spellbinding travel book, exploring the psychology of walking, pilgrimage, solitude and escape. 'An extraordinary, dreamlike journey through West Africa' Adharanand FinnAt the age of twenty-seven and afraid of falling into a lif…

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…

Dom Joly sets off round the world, but this time he's not looking to holiday in a danger zone - he's monster hunting. Ever since he was given a copy of Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World for his ninth birthday Dom has been obsess…

Ever since he can remember, Dom Joly has been fascinated by travel to odd places. In part this stems from a childhood spent in war-torn Lebanon, where instead of swapping marbles in the schoolyard, he had a shrapnel collection -- …

*A SCOTSMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR* Stranded at Schiphol airport, Ben Coates called up a friendly Dutch girl he'd met some months earlier. He stayed for dinner. Actually, he stayed for good.In the first book to consider the hidde…

Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, k…

In the spring of 2012, Calum finds himself single again after his relationship of six years comes to an end. Heartbroken, unhappy and unsure of what to do next, he leaves the hometown he has been in all his life to embark on a jou…

One sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travelling only along small back roads, Alan Booth travelled on foot from Soya, the count…