Dette er historien om forfatterens åtte måneder lange reise tvers over Asia, langs Silkeveien. Ved hjelp av transportmiddel som lastebil, eselkjerre og kamel har han fulgt i sporene til handelsmenn, hærer, religioner og oppfinnelser. Dette er også en bok om et kontinent under omveltning og om møter med ulike mennskeskjebner. Har register.

Forfatteren har reist på kryss og tvers over hele Sibir. Her forteller han om sitt møte med denne delen av Russland, den ville og varierende naturen, kulturen og menneskene som bor der. Har stikkordregister.

Shadow of the Silk Road records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months.

It began with a spark... A house is burning. At times he shares their obsessions and memories. He will also share their fate. The passions of these individuals reach beyond the dying house that holds them. One recalls a lonely childhood, another the cremation grounds of India, another an African refugee camp.

'Among the Russians' tells the story of Colin Thubron's journey by car from St Petersburg to Armenia in the last decade of the Soviet Union. Thubron grapples with the complexities of Russian identity and presents a sharp and insightful social commentary on Russian life in the 1980s.

Recounts legends and folktales from around the world concerning people's encounters with elves and fairies.

`Of all his generation's travellers, Jonathan Raban is the most sophisticated, writing with a subtle and imaginative brilliance.' Colin Thubron`One of the most humane and visionary of all travel writers.' Jeremy SealInto Jonathan Raban's familiar Earls Court neighbourhood after the 1970s oil boom came new visitors from the Arab world, dressed in floor-length robes and yashmaks. A people apart, little known, Raban wanted to get behind the myth and the rumour to discover the reality of their lives and world. His journey took him through Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Yemen, Egypt and Jordan. What he discovered was a far cry from the camel, tent and sand dune archetypes of early European explorers. Oil wealth had seeped into almost every corner, and Bedouin encampments had been replaced by cosmopolitan boomtowns, camels by Range Rovers. The sons of Bedouin nomads were now studying medicine in Europe and engineering in New York. Yet in this fast-moving world, old certainties remained - and cultural innovation lagged miles behind economic change.Raban's gift for friendship introduces us to a series of memorable individuals - rich and poor - set against the feel, the smells, the sounds and the nuances of Arabia.

A charming and beautifully written account of the pleasures of slow travel - for readers of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Colin Thubron and Eric Newby.

Unease has marked relations between modern travel writers and the people of Cyprus. Visitors like Lawrence Durrell, Colin Thubron, Christopher Hitchens and Sebastian Junger have registered the effects of political strife on both the people of the island and those who visit from abroad. Their accounts demonstrate how geopolitical realities--such as colonization, insurgency, inter-communal warfare, and now decades of militarized 'peace'--shape the narrating self and its relations to others. Here, Jim Bowman assesses the effects of Cypriot history on writings about the island through an analysis of memoirs, travelogues, political journalism, guide books and ethnographies. Through this examination of popular texts, Bowman shows how a western and politicized image of Cyprus has been created, increasingly divorced from the realities experienced by the local population. Narratives of Cyprus is an important reassessment of Cyprus' place in British culture, and will be of interest to scholars and students of Anthropology, English Literature and Ethnographic Studies.

A brand new collection of remarkable travel tales from 'Silver Travellers'. Dervla Murphy travelling in Cuba at the age of 74, Matthew Parris swimming the Thames at 60, and Colin Thubron climbing the last stronghold of the Assassins in his 60s are among the writers recounting their adventures, often defying expectations - and the odds - and going outside their comfort zone to take a less-travelled path in later life. Published with participation from the Silver Travel Advisor, this single volume brings together contributions - some original, some previously published - from independent-minded souls whose experiences have been entertaining, amusing, thrilling, and even a little irresponsible. Other contributors include Roger Bray, 'Green Goddess' Diana Moran and our very own Hilary Bradt.

Uzbekistan is a land of paradoxes, both enjoyable and surprising for foreign visitors. One of the ex-Soviet Asian republics, it is located in the center of what the British writer Colin Thubron called the Lost Heart of Asia, a country of deserts, mounta

'One woman's gloriously lyrical account of life and love as a shepherdess' Mail on Sunday'Janet White's unfailingly enjoyable book . . . taps into a widespread feeling that we have become cut off from the natural world' TLS'An immensely enjoyable and heartfelt book: it makes you want to run for the hills' The LadyWith an introduction by Colin ThubronAs a child in wartime England, Janet White decided that she wanted to live somewhere wild and supremely beautiful, to inhabit and work the landscape. She imagined searching the whole world for a place, high and remote as a sheep stell, quiet as a monastery, challenging and virginal, untouched and unknown. Turning her back on convention, Janet's desire to carve out her own pastoral Eden has taken her from the Cheviot Hills to Sussex and Somerset, via the savage beauty of rural New Zealand. The Sheep Stell tells the tale of a woman before her time; a woman with incredible courage and determination, truly devoted to the land and its creatures. Evocative, unaffected and profound, it is a lost classic.'A book to share or even fight over if necessary' Rosamund Young, author of The Secret Life of Cows'An extraordinary memoir . . . The Sheep Stell is pure joy, one of the most moving books I've read in a long time' Philip Marsden, author of Rising Ground 'This is a strange and lovely book, and quiet as it is, it makes you gasp at the profoundly lived quality of the life it so modestly describes' Jenny Diski'A hymn to country solitude, lyrical, unpretentious and deeply felt' Colin Thubron

Anthology of short excerpts from the writings of more than 50 famous literary and historical figures on the subject of railways and rail journeys around the world - Bill Bryson, Agatha Christie, William Dalrymple, Peter Fleming, Kenneth Grahame, Rudyard Kipling, Eric Newby, Christopher Portway, Paul Theroux, Colin Thubron and Mark Tully among many others. Brief biographies of all the writers quoted are included. Will appeal to rail travellers and armchair travellers alike. This hardback anthology is a perfect gift book.

Rory Stewart's moving, sparsely poetic account of his walk across Afghanistan in January 2002 has been immediately hailed as a classic. Caught between hostile nations, warring factions and competing ideologies, at the time, Afghanistan was in turmoil following the US invasion. Travelling entirely on foot and following the inaccessible, mountainous route once taken by the Mohgul Emperor, Babur the Great, Stewart was nearly defeated by the extreme, hostile conditions. Only due to the help of an unexpected companion and the generosity of the people he met on the way, did he survive to report back with unique insight on a region closed to the world by twenty-four years of war. `This is traveling at its hardest and travel-writing at its best' - David Gilmour 'an astonishing achievement: a unique journey of great courage' - Colin Thubron 'wise, funny and marvelously humane' - Michael Ignatieff `[this] evocative book feels like a long lost relic of the great age of exploration' - Guardian `His encounters with Afghans are tragic, touching and terrifying.' - Daily Telegraph

The long-awaited final volume of the trilogy by Patrick Leigh Fermor. A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water were the first two volumes in a projected trilogy that would describe the walk that Patrick Leigh Fermor undertook at the age of eighteen from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople. 'When are you going to finish Vol. III?' was the cry from his fans; but although he wished he could, the words refused to come. The curious thing was that he had not only written an early draft of the last part of the walk, but that it predated the other two. It remains unfinished but The Broken Road - edited and introduced by Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper - completes an extraordinary journey.

For more than forty years I have collected and read travel books... I marked passages that enthused me and so gathered a library that was annotated by triangular corner-folds and barely decipherable jottings. This was my own inadvertent wool-gathering...Scraps of Wool is a celebration of travel writing, bringing together in a single volume passages that have enthralled generations of readers, encouraged them to dream of exploration and set off on journeys of their own.Compiled by Bill Colegrave, its excerpts have been selected by today's travel writers and journalists, who have revealed the books that influenced them: Dervla Murphy, Tony Wheeler, Rory MacLean, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron, Artemis Cooper, Sara Wheeler, Alexander Frater and many more.Each of these scraps is a document of the writer's passion for place - thick equatorial jungle, the soft ergs of the Sahara, Patagonian steppe - and each story, each memory will transport you to a different corner of the globe, and maybe even inspire you to plan your own great adventure.

Following the success of The Walker's Anthology , The Railway Anthology, and The Cyclist's Anthology we're continuing this series with further short excerpts from the writings of famous literary figures on the subject of hiking, trekking and climbing around the world. In this fascinating anthology, Bryn Thomas has drawn on writings of more than 50 literary figures - Bill Bryson, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, William Dalrymple, Daniel Defoe, EM Forster, Amitav Ghosh, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Eric Newby, JB Priestley, Bayard Taylor, Paul Theroux, Henry David Thoreau, Colin Thubron, Mark Twain and H.G. Wells among many others. This entertaining hardback anthology will appeal to hikers and armchair travelers alike and make the perfect gift.