Travel & Places 37 TRAVEL AND PLACES


When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings.


- Charles Dickens, David Copperfield 69207 IMPRESSIONS OF


RAJASTHAN by Carisse and Gérard Busquet


Rajasthan, situated in the northwest of India, is a land of contrasts, from the arid plains in the west sculpted by desert winds, to the eastern


states with their lush fertile valleys and rolling hills cloaked in green. Not only do the region’s imposing forts, palaces and pleasure pavilions continue to enthral visitors from across the world, it is also a land rich in street colour and popular pageant. The superb photos throughout this book capture the everyday life of those living in Rajasthan - from the isolation of the Thar desert to women washing in groups on the banks of Lake Picchola, and from camel herders chatting at the Pushkar camel fair to children playing in the streets of Jodhpur, the blue city. The reader is permitted a rare glimpse into havali, the once luxurious homes of wealthy merchants, ornately decorated with richly painted frescoes, and also offered a unique view of women painting the walls of their modest homes with powerful, sacred frescoes depicting village scenes, abstract designs or natural elements. The informative text provides the historical context of this land rich in artistic tradition. It also explains the symbolism and spiritualism portrayed in the murals that are essential to the cultural heritage of Rajasthan. 194 pages in brilliant colour with map and glossary. £37.50 NOW £17.50


69320 BANGKOK BABYLON by Jerry Hopkins


In the colourful tradition of Orwell, Hemingway, Maugham and Theroux, Jerry Hopkins recalls his first decade as a Bangkok expatriate by profiling 25 of the city’s most unforgettable characters. Among them are the man thought to be the model for Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, an advertising executive who photographed Thai bar girls for Playboy, an Oscar-


winning screenwriter who moved there to die, a Catholic priest lived and worked in Bangkok slums for 35 years, a circus dwarf turned computer programmer turned restaurateur, three Vietnam War helicopter pilots who opened a Go-Go bar, a pianist at one of the world’s best hotels who ended up on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list, a gem dealer who smuggles antiquities from Burma and Cambodia, a detective who tracks runaways who fake their deaths and a documentary filmmaker who lives with elephants. All of them ‘escaped’ to Thailand to re- invent themselves and live out their fantasies in one of the world’s most notorious cities. 224 unusual pages in paperback.


£14.50 NOW £4 69063 TWO STEPS


BACKWARD by Susie Kelly Subtitled The Misadventures of an English Woman in France, here is the sequel from the author of Best Foot Forward. Susie Kelly and her husband Terry had long dreamed of owning a home in France, but ironically it was not until they were facing homeless penury in England that they realised their dream. With five dogs, two parrots and their elderly horses, they moved to an


old farm house in the Poitou-Charentes region with dirt floors, no water and a primitive electricity supply. While Terry was back in England trying to support them all, Susie contended with a homicidal gas cooker at the bottom of the garden, burst pipes, a guinea fowl that turned somersaults and bit people on the shin, and a constant stream of people turning up at her door with needs of their own. Sometimes the enormity of renovating a house with insufficient funds and little help seemed overwhelming. She saw Terry infrequently and their English neighbour was imprisoned on drug- smuggling charges. When Terry developed a life- threatening condition, the dream threatened to turn into a nightmare. The pair seemed to be taking two steps backwards, but the kindness of the local community and the tranquillity of the landscape inspired them to make a new life for themselves and their animals in the place that they now call home. 332pp in paperback. £7.99 NOW £3


69005 IN-FLIGHT SCIENCE: A Guide to the World From your Airplane Window by Brian Clegg


The author admits he does not enjoy flying, and engagingly starts this fascinating book from the point of view of a nervous passenger at the airport terminal. Reassured by the fact that a car is twelve times more dangerous, the passenger proceeds to the bag check and body scan, where surveillance is explained


in detail and “the science of superstition” tells us why there is no gate 13. Aeroplane technology follows - how on earth does it manage to stay in the sky? - but overcoming a bout of vertigo the passenger looks out of the window and sees white horses cut into downland chalk, the complex contours of a coastline and asks the million dollar question: what colour is the sea? An air flight gives an unrivalled view of the landscape and Brian Clegg examines the psychology which prompts people to create structures which are best viewed from the air, for instance the crop-circle hoaxers of the 1970s and the ancient Nazca lines in the Peruvian desert which were created centuries before human flight was envisaged. When the plane rises above the clouds there are opportunities for considering different types of cloud formation, and finally Galileo’s theories of relativity make fascinating reading before the well-informed


passenger lands with minimum friction. 212pp, paperback, b/w photos. £12.99 NOW £5


69407 DIARY OF AN


INVALID (1817-1819) by Henry Matthews Subtitled ‘Journal of a Tour in Pursuit of Health 1817-1819’, this is a colourful account of the author’s travels through Portugal, Italy, Switzerland and France. It is what he calls a ‘wild goose chase after health’, coincidently following the fashion among the rich for making a ‘grand tour’ around the cultural highlights of the Continent.


Although plagued by the vagaries of the weather, of which he complains volubly, the author offers vivid descriptions of the artistic and architectural wonders of the cities he visits. Accompanied by irreverent and humorous descriptions of the characters he meets along the way, his diary provides us with a fantastic insight into the surprising world of an English gentleman abroad in the early 20th century. Born in 1879, the author was educated at Eton and Kings College Cambridge, was made a judge in 1927 and died in Ceylon in 1928. 381pp in paperback. £12 NOW £4.50


66138 TRAVELLER’S TREE: A Journey


Through the Caribbean Islands by Patrick Leigh-Fermor


This reissue of a 1950 Caribbean classic starts in Guadeloupe where Leigh-Fermor and his two companions, Joan and Costa, are surprised at the guard of honour apparently waiting for them at the docks. Guadeloupe is followed by Martinique, Grenada, St Lucia, Barbados, Trinidad, Haiti and Jamaica. Barbadian life is dominated by the cricket ball and the blackball, its club system a way of perpetuating the rigid apartheid of the 1950s which Leigh-Fermor finds loathsome and disturbing. In Jamaica he investigates the history of slavery, including the practice of Obeah, casting spells and Voodoo. The journey ends in carnival Havana. 404pp, paperback, maps. £9.99 NOW £5


62845 A TIME OF GIFTS by Patrick Leigh Fermor


At the age of 18, PLF set out to walk from Rotterdam to Istanbul equipped, like a latter-day medieval pilgrim, with staff, sketchbook and rucksack, as well as a surprisingly useful understanding of Latin, a flair for modern languages and an insatiable curiosity and vast store of arcane knowledge. Sit back and enjoy one of the great masters of English prose in his classic memoir of an enchanted journey across pre-war Europe. We enjoy with him the monasteries, great rivers, hospitable burgomasters, the sun on the Bavarian snow, and observations of storks and frogs, architecture, art, genealogy and quirks of history and language, all devoured. 292pp in paperback. £9.99 NOW £4.50


62850 ROUMELI: Travels in Northern Greece by Patrick Leigh Fermor


Roumeli is not to be found on present day maps. It is the name given in olden times to Northern Greece, stretching from the Bosphorus to the Adriatic and from Macedonia to the Gulf of Corinth. Leigh Fermor was so seduced by the strangeness of its name that he immortalised it in the classic account of his travels there. He explores a tenuous scholastic link with the glories of the ancient world and the more recent but no less historic Byzantine heritage and legacy of Ottoman domination. Underlying it all is an even older world in the hills, mountains and stretches of barely-explored coast. 248 page paperback facsimile reprint of the original 1966 publication. £9.99 NOW £4.50


68319 BETWEEN THE WOODS AND WATER by Patrick Leigh Fermor


Continuing an 18 year old’s epic 1933 journey on foot across Europe begun in A Time of Gifts (code 62845), picking up from the very spot on a bridge crossing the Danube between Slovakia and Hungary where the reader left him, this is a literary masterpiece and a satisfying journey in its own right. It is even more magical. Through Hungary, its lost province of Transylvania and into Romania, sampling the tail end of a languid, urbane and anglophile way of life that would soon be swept away forever. Leigh Fermor’s head is stocked with enough cultural lore and poetic fantasy to make every mile an adventure. 248pp in facsimile reprint paperback with illus and maps. £8.99 NOW £5


68337 MANI: Travels in the Southern


Peloponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor The Mani, at the heart of Europe’s southernmost promontory, is the remotest, wildest and most isolated region in Greece. Cut off by the towering range of the Taygetus and hemmed in by the Aegean and Ionian seas, it is a land where an ancient relationship with the past has remained alive, on a daily basis. The author carries the reader with him on his journeying amongst the Greeks of the mountains, exploring the history and time-honoured lore. As mysteriously touching as the skeletal outlines, sun-glowed or moon-burnished, of that rocky landscape, he supercharges his narrative with tenderness and high spirits, appropriate to his past achievements as a guerrilla leader in Crete. Together with Roumeli (code 62850), these are regarded as two of the best travel books of the last century. 320pp in paperback.


£9.99 NOW £4.50 68509 PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR: Set of Five


Paperbacks by Patrick Leigh-Fermor Buy all five paperbacks by one of the great travellers of the 20th century and save even more. £48.95 NOW £20


66420 ATHENS: Scenes from a Capital City by John Cleave


There is more to Athens than the Acropolis, the Parthenon and the old town of Plaka. The city also boasts charming residential areas, historic squares, modern buildings, lively cafes, designer boutiques and the site of the 2004 Olympic Games. Here are the many faces of Athens, from reminders of archaic, classical, Hellenistic and Roman times to fine public buildings of the 19th century, from the Temple of Hephaestus to upscale Kolonaki, and from the mountain slopes of Kifissia to the busy port of Piraeus. 96 large pages with over 180 watercolour-like computer


Bibliophile Books Unit 5 Datapoint, 6 South Crescent, London E16 4TL TEL: 020 74 74 24 74


adaptations of beautiful original photos, plus Gazetteer. £16.95 NOW £4


66735 MOST NOBLE AND FAMOUS TRAVELS


OF MARCO POLO edited by John Sampton No.6 in the Argonaut Press 1929 facsimile reprinted series by Nico Israel and published in Amsterdam 1971. The full title is ‘The Most Noble and Famous Travels of Marco Polo Together with the Travels of Nicolo De’Conti edited in the Elizabethan translation by John Frampton.’ It includes introductions, notes and appendices by N. M. Penzer. Immediately on opening this elegant hardback is a superb gatefold map showing the itineraries of Marco Polo marked in red across the globe from Venice to Singapore, Peking to the Persian Gulf. The original head and tail pieces have been preserved together with 16th century capitals. Two copies of the original edition of this book are in the British Museum and are exceedingly rare which is why Bibliophile is thrilled to have imported these facsimiles. The book deals with Polo’s many journeys spread over more than 30 years. We know that while in the service of the Khan, Polo was sent on various missions including running into difficulties in deciding the route at the crossing of the Hwang ho. At times Polo may be speaking of places and peoples visited by elder Polos alone which seems to be the case with the Turfan- Camul-Sachiu section. The Polos arrived back in Venice in 1295, and in 1298 Marco was taken to Genoa as a prisoner of war, thus over two years had elapsed in which he must have related his travels constantly. 381 large pages in beautifully bound and gilded hardback, maps and with itineraries marked in red. ONLY £16


66753 VOYAGE TO THE SOUTH SEA: Two Volumes by Edward Cooke


Rare first editions published 1969 by Nico Israel of Amsterdam, these are facsimiles of the original Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World in the Years 1708-1771, facsimile reprints of the originals. They are complete with beautiful woodcuts and gatefold maps and architectural plans such as one of the city of Cusco, capital of Peru, and a map of Terra Firma Peru Amazone-land, Brazil and La Plata. Volume one covers departure from Bristol, the Canaries, the coast of Brazil, Chile, Dutch and English discoveries, California, the description of the country of new Spain from Panama, the barbarity of the inhabitants and the return home from the South Sea through India to Holland and into the Downs. 450pp. Volume two is similarly a facsimile reprint in the original olde English with many gatefolds and illustrations throughout the text plus decorations and beautiful typography. 330pp. ONLY £30


66759 THE WORLD ENCOMPASSED BY SIR


FRANCIS DRAKE edited by N. M. Penzer Originally published in 1926 by the Argonaut Press, London, we have a beautiful 1971 rare edition. Much has been written about Francis Drake ever since he died in 1596. The last published authoritative commentaries on ‘The World Encompassed’ was published by his nephew and namesake, the first Baronet, Sir Francis Drake in 1628 for the Hakluyt Society. The book does not tell the story of Drake’s all-important voyage of circumnavigation as he composed it. That story has most unfortunately been lost, and the story that has survived is a compilation 50 years after the voyage by his nephew, chiefly out of the tales about Drake told by his chaplain Francis Fletcher and other contemporaries. Here are experiences such as being in a ship in uncharted waters full of coral reefs, to bump into one of them and get off again and know what it was like to go in a launch about the size of the Golden Hind to explore the Caribbean sea, the Straits of Magellan or the Malay Archipelago. Woodcut illus, marginalia, gatefold and maps. Gold embossed hardback, no dust jacket. ONLY £12.50


67073 SEEKING PROVENCE: Old Myths, New


Paths by Nicholas Woodsworth Provence can accurately be called one of the cultural crossroads of European history and an inspiration to artists, poets and troubadours. Writer Woodsworth married into a Provençal family and has lived in the region for decades. He lovingly and carefully notes every facet and detail of life there and provides a refreshing antidote to the rosé and romantic view of it being a perennially funny destination for tourists. The real Provençaux have always lived a hard life close to the land and the rhythms of the seasons. And it is a world away from London’s Docklands, where the author begins his journey. Attractive endpapers, 393pp.


£12.99 NOW £2


67545 TRAVELS OF SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE edited by E. C. Coleman


Translated from Latin into French and then into English so ‘that every man of my nacioun may undirstonde it’, Sir John Mandeville, a 14th century English knight, set sail from the land of his birth in 1322. 34 years later, in 1356, he returned. During his travels through Europe, the Near, Middle and Far East and India, he had seen giraffes and crocodiles, fought for the Great Khan and refused an offer of marriage to a sultan’s daughter. His account of his adventures was an instant bestseller, second only to the Bible and, despite the fact that some of it, such as that lambs grew on trees is now known to be untrue, it was used as a work of reference - Christopher Columbus had a copy aboard his ship when he first sailed to the Americas. 286pp in paperback with many woodcuts. £10 NOW £3


68641 THE HIKE AND EVERY DAMN THING ELSE! by Don Shawl


Meet Freddie, Phil and Don, three hilarious deep- thinking retired men determined to keep hiking to the bitter end in their beloved Peak District, but each for very different reasons. Phil is a former air traffic controller and the group’s self-appointed leader. He is on a mission not to grow old and believes his combination of obsessive physical exercise and the latest health supplements will hold back time. His constant sparring partner is Freddie, a shambolic slacker who prefers to stroll and smell the flowers. His eternal mission is to find the meaning of life, and until he does, he takes consolation in outmanoeuvring the vulgar, aspirational world around him. Thankfully they have Don to calm the waters. All Don asks for in return is some peace, tranquillity, companionship and perhaps a decent pint when they reach their destination. What all


My Sketchbook… 69219 MY CHINESE SKETCHBOOK by Fu Ji Tsang


The artist draws inspiration from the colours of the south of France where he now lives, and from the great classics of Chinese art and literature. He has developed an original pictorial language incorporating watercolour and ink and his paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout Europe, Asia and North America. With his critically-acclaimed paintings and evocative sketches, he leads the viewer on a semi- autobiographical journey through China. This intimate account takes the reader from Beijing, the cradle of the artist’s childhood memories, over Huangshan, the yellow mountain famous for inspiring many a painter and poet, across the canals of Zhouzhuang - China’s first village on water - and to Taishan, the most sacred of the Taoist mountains. He expresses his affinity for nature through vibrant depictions of exotic flora and magnificent mystical landscapes and also celebrates China’s people and their culture, with chapters devoted to Chinese music, dance and costumes.


Brushstrokes and text come together to create an authentic patchwork describing a vast and diverse country. 136 large pages in exquisite colour with map. £16.95 NOW £7


69221 MY JAPANESE SKETCHBOOK by Cloé Fontaine and Ryoichi Shigeta With cloth binding and beautiful endpapers, this Parisian publisher Flammarion really knows how to present a beautiful and collectable book. Cloé Fontaine, a young French architect with a passion for colour, arrived in Tokyo and spent a few days in Kyoto before coming to discover the island of Shikoku. Even in Tokyo she finds silence and serenity and with her brush and pen in hand she looks at the shrines and temples and rolling hills of this country of contrasts. Temples and tatamis, parasols and teapots, fountains and water lillies, here are charming watercolours, modern collages, personal stories and a selection of traditional haikus which she captures in many juxtapositions of East and West, old and new. Architecture, customs, scenery and the modern city, here are the paper thin walls, matted flooring, tables and chairs without legs, woven bamboo, lanterns, ceramic tile patterns, temples and Buddhas, gorgeous geisha costume in full colour, flowers and petals, lotus, Zen gardens, koi carp to crazy characters in the shopping mall and a near naked geisha cooling her body in the stream. A beautifully designed landscape format volume, 136pp. £16.95 NOW £7


69220 MY EGYPTIAN SKETCHBOOK


by Florine Asch and Christiane Desroches Exquisitely designed and produced by the Parisian publisher Flammarion, the cloth binding is embossed with hieroglyphics in this landscape format tome full of beautiful watercolours. As the day breaks spilling warm, honeyed light over Cairo, Florine Asch sets out with her sketchpad, pencils and paintbrushes. In her journey through this ancient and mysterious land she encounters the sandstone hills of Abu Simbel, the Pyramids of Giza, the baroque elegance of Cairo’s grand interiors, a spring in the middle of the desert, sailing boats seen from the terrace of the Old Cataract, Wady Kardassy Temple at Nubia, the Isle of Carr Ibrim, makes a rendition of David Roberts’ two painters, the Temple at Edfu, a turquoise earthenware sphinx, a shepherd boy, terraces and hotels, shops and people all beautifully drawn by her hand. From the tranquillity of a felucca floating down the Nile to the bustle of the spice stalls in the market, here is life in the city and the beauty of the desert all come to life under her brush. With handwritten captions throughout and short text, quotations and full page watercolours. £16.95 NOW £7


69222 MY VENETIAN SKETCHBOOK by Isabelle de Borchgrave,


Venice has always fascinated, dazzled and astonished her admirers. The city and its surroundings have been an endless source of inspiration. Innumerable artists have yielded to the mysterious charms of the City of the Doges. Here, a much-praised artist uses watercolour and drawings to depict the city as it first appeared to her - ‘seductive even in her rather worn finery, sumptuous, secretive, a compound of nostalgia and fragility’. She uses a symphony of ochres, blues, dusty pinks, bold purples and serene grays to delineate Venice in all her moods from the shimmering heat of July to the misty air of December. Thanks to a keen eye and a deft hand, the artist succeeds in leading the reader from the familiar sight of light reflecting upon the surface of a canal to the lesser-known delights of the Fortuny workshops, stopping along the way to grab an espresso at the Caffe Florian, and to enjoy the hustle and bustle of St Mark’s Square. Translated from the French by Susan Pickford. 138 large format pages in delicate colour. £16.95 NOW £7


69594 SKETCHBOOKS: Set of Four Beautiful landscape hardbacks. Buy all four and save more. £67.80 NOW £24


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