Stanfords Event: Wayfarer by Phoebe Smith

Last night we celebrated the launch of adventurer Phoebe Smith’s new book Wayfarer. Phoebe was interviewed by editor and travel writer Meera Dattani in front of a packed out audience.

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Book of the Month: The Half Known Life by Pico Iyer

Our Book of the Month for January 2023 is The Half Known Life: Finding Paradise in a Divided World by the former Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award winner Pico Iyer.

One of the most perceptive travel writers embarks on an exploration of the world’s holiest places and where we might find paradise on Earth. 

“It’s so easy, I thought, to place Paradise in the past or the future – anywhere but here.” 

After half a century of travel, from Ethiopia to Tibet, from Belfast to Jerusalem, Pico Iyer asks himself what kind of paradise can ever be found in a world of unceasing conflict. In a spectacular journey, both inward and outward, Iyer roams from crowded mosques in Iran to a film studio in North Korea, from a holy mountain in Japan to the sometimes spooky emptiness of the Australian outback. 

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2023 Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year Shortlist Announced

The Shortlist for the 2023 Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year has been announced. The award, which was open to authors from all across the world, celebrates excellence in literary travel writing.

Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year Shortlist:

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The Amur River by Colin Thubron in pictures

Rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific, the Amur River forms the tense border between Russia and China. This is the most densely fortified frontier on Earth.

In his eightieth year, Colin Thubron takes a dramatic and often treacherous journey from the Amur’s secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles. Harassed by injury and by arrest from the local police, he makes his way along both the Russian and Chinese shores. By the time he reaches the river’s desolate end, a whole, pivotal world has come alive.

To celebrate the paperback launch of the 2022 Stanford Dolman winning The Amur River by Colin Thubron here are some photographs taken on the journey.

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Extract: My Family and Other Enemies

My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born. In recounting her own family’s tumultuous history, Novakovich opens up a world that is little known outside the Balkans, telling the stories of people whose experiences weren’t widely reported at the time, when the devastation in Croatia was superseded by the Bosnian conflict and media attention moved elsewhere.

Here is an extract:

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Where My Feet Fall: Going For A Walk In Twenty Stories

Edited by Duncan Minshull. William Collins.

To head for a place on foot is to – meander and wander.. ramble and amble.. stroll and saunter.. strut and scuff.. loiter and lurch.. ambulate and.. well, just walk. Furthermore, don’t we set out across all sorts of landscapes and cityscapes, in all sorts of weathers, for all sorts of reasons? Be they physical or psychological reasons, personal or public, sometimes even political?

And, isn’t it about time we had insight into this?

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An extract from the prologue of Crossed off the Map: Travels in Bolivia

-by Shafik Meghji

In 1867, so the story goes, Mariano Melgarejo, the 15th president of Bolivia, asked the British ambassador to pay respects to his latest mistress. When the request was haughtily declined, Melgarejo, whose time in office was marked by brutality and political miscalculation, took great offence. The ambassador was swiftly apprehended, stripped naked, tied to an ass – facing the rear, naturally – and paraded around the main square of La Paz, before being kicked out of the country.

La Paz
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The Fairy Tellers’ Trail

The Stanford Dolman Award winning author, Nicholas Jubber’s new book The Fairy Tellers: A Journey into the Secret History of Fairy Tales looks at the global origins of the fairy tales we all know so well. 

Here, Nicholas takes us on a brief fairy tellers’ trail:

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Happy 90th Birthday Dervla Murphy

The award winning travel writer Dervla Murphy turns 90 on Sunday 28th November. Stanfords wishes her a very happy birthday.

Irish Examiner News Picture 01-10-2011 Saturday Social Page. Travel writer Dervla Murphy at her home in Lismore, Co Waterford. Picture: Dan Linehan

Dervla Murphy has won worldwide praise for her writing and has been described as a ‘travel legend’ and ‘the First Lady of Irish cycling’. In March she joined Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Jan Morris, Colin Thubron and Paul Theroux and became a recipient of the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.

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Book of the Month: Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles

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. 

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