Travels in Tandem

'The book grew out of a habit, early adopted when on her travels...of writing...an unpretending narrative of the previous day's proceedings to be sent home to her father.' Thus wrote Thomas Brassey of his wife Annie. As for his own account of their travels, Susanna Hoe describes it as 'full of reports of experts...and often about exports.' And she explores the question, are women travel companions' accounts more generally 'unpretending narratives', and men's the opposite? The theme expanded when the author was asked, 'Do women write with more immediacy, with more colour, more empathy and more attention to detail?' Using extensive quotations, the author pursues those and other questions through the relations and accounts of couples visiting or living in foreign places, from Liberia to Siberia, from Vanuatu to Chinese Turkestan, between 1664 and 1973.