Regular readers of this blog will know of my love of travel writing.
Currently got Sara Wheeler and Barbara Demick books on the go.... with a few bits of several others for a piece of writing I'm doing.
I have 3-400 travel books in my 'library' and regular pick them out for a quote on travel, or landscape, or to find out about a particular place that I'm preparing resources on.
In May, I am going down to the Royal Geographical Society to see Paul Theroux talk about the enlightenment of travel. If anyone else is going to be there, we can perhaps meet up before hand for a swift half ?
You can read a recent piece by Paul Theroux in the New York Times here, which mentions his new book on the enlightenment of travel...
With thanks to Alasdair of @deviations for the tipoff...
As Theroux says, reflecting on the impact of current world events:
For the modern traveler there are recent and sharp reversals — the overthrow of longstanding governments, earthquakes, a volcano, the release of radioactivity into a blue sky and cows’ milk — all in the span of a few months. What then is the traveler to do except huddle and observe?
The map of the possible world being redrawn right now — parts of it in tragic and unsettling ways — might soon mean new opportunities for the traveler who dares to try it. Travel, especially of the old laborious kind, has never seemed to me of greater importance, more essential, more enlightening.
Paul Theroux
Currently got Sara Wheeler and Barbara Demick books on the go.... with a few bits of several others for a piece of writing I'm doing.
I have 3-400 travel books in my 'library' and regular pick them out for a quote on travel, or landscape, or to find out about a particular place that I'm preparing resources on.
In May, I am going down to the Royal Geographical Society to see Paul Theroux talk about the enlightenment of travel. If anyone else is going to be there, we can perhaps meet up before hand for a swift half ?
You can read a recent piece by Paul Theroux in the New York Times here, which mentions his new book on the enlightenment of travel...
With thanks to Alasdair of @deviations for the tipoff...
As Theroux says, reflecting on the impact of current world events:
For the modern traveler there are recent and sharp reversals — the overthrow of longstanding governments, earthquakes, a volcano, the release of radioactivity into a blue sky and cows’ milk — all in the span of a few months. What then is the traveler to do except huddle and observe?
The map of the possible world being redrawn right now — parts of it in tragic and unsettling ways — might soon mean new opportunities for the traveler who dares to try it. Travel, especially of the old laborious kind, has never seemed to me of greater importance, more essential, more enlightening.
Paul Theroux
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