www.bibliophilebooks.com TRAVEL AND PLACES


You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go...


- Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!


76509 KEEPING UP WITH THE GERMANS: A History of


Anglo-German Encounters by Philip Oltermann


In 1966, in the middle of watching rather an ill-tempered football match between England and Germany, the author’s parents tell him that they are going to leave their home city of Hamburg and move to London. A number of worrying questions occur to him. How will English schoolboys


take to a lanky 16-year-old German? Do they think and do things differently? Are there values that English and German people share? What is the secret of British humour? In search of answers, this unusual book interweaves memoir and history to look at eight historical encounters between English and German people from the last 200 years: political summits and football matches, chance meetings between poets and film stars, terrorists and philosophers. Helmut Kohl tries to explain German cuisine to Margaret Thatcher, Theodor Adorno clashes with A. J. Ayer over jazz, the Mini plays catch-up with the Volkswagen Beetle, Dada artist Kurt Schwitters rediscovers German Romanticism in the Lake District and Joe Strummer has an unlikely brush with the Baader-Meinhof gang. Two weird and wonderful alternative national stories. 268 softback pages. £12.99 NOW £4.50


76612 INTO THE SILENCE:


The Great War, Mallory: and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis


In an account quite unlike other mountaineering books, based on more than a decade of prodigious research in British, Canadian and European archives, access to letters and diaries, and months in the field in Nepal and Tibet, an award-


winning anthropologist vividly recreates the epic attempts of British climbers to scale Mount Everest in the early 1920s. In a classic tale of exploration and endurance it paints a timeless portrait of an extraordinary generation of adventurers, soldiers and mountaineers, the likes of which we may never see again. George Mallory, 37, was then Britain’s finest climber. Sandy Irvine was a young Oxford scholar of 22 with little previous mountaineering experience. Together they set out in the face of treacherous terrain and furious weather from a camp perched at 23,000 feet on an ice ledge just below the lip of Mount Everest’s North Col. Neither of them returned. This moving volume sets their remarkable achievements in a sweeping historical


76621 A NEW ACCOUNT OF THE EAST


INDIES by Alexander Hamilton Published in 1970 by Nico Israel of


Amsterdam, volumes one to two are bound in one glorious leather gold blocked binding and has been edited by Sir William Foster in a facsimile of the 1930 Argonaut Press original. The importance of Alexander Hamilton’s account of his experiences in the East (1688-1723) was written after his great voyages through Europe, to Barbary and to Jamaica before finally going in 1688 to the East Indies in his early 20s. After his return from China, Hamilton in 1694 took his first independent venture and appears to have called at Malacca in 1696 and the following year at Johore with a suitable cargo (volume two page 51). There he found the survivors of the Scottish East India Company’s vessel Speedwell which, like the Harwich, had been wrecked after careening. Hamilton, who was on his way back to Surat, took the sailors on board his own ships. In 1702 he hired the Albemarle for a trading voyage from Surat to the Malabar Coast and back (volume one page 165) but whether this was before or after the Achin venture cannot be determined. The following year he made his fourth voyage to China in a ship of 40 guns manned by a crew of over 150 (volume two page 119). An old friend, now a Sultan, offered him the present of the island of Singapore, but he refused the gift! His venture to Java had not been a great success and his references to the Dutch monopoly are tinged with bitterness. Instead his next voyage was to Bengal and early in July 1705 he anchored off Calcutta with three ships, the Vintaghurry, the Buckhurst and the St. George. The remaining months of 1705 were spent in selling and buying goods. In 1707, Hamilton sustained considerable loss when two ships belonging to private merchants were burnt. We follow him to the Red Sea, to Siam, the Persian Gulf and read about him in the Minutes of the Court of Directors of the East India Company. Long lost in a warehouse for many years, we are thrilled to have this facsimile reprint in new condition, 226pp with no less than four gatefold maps and woodcut illus. A rare find. ONLY £12


context, showing how the exploration originated in 19th century imperial ambitions. It takes readers far beyond the Himalayas to the trenches of World War I, where Mallory and his generation found themselves and their world utterly shattered. In the wake of the war that destroyed all notions of honour and decency, the Everest expeditions, led by these scions of Britain’s élite, emerged as a symbol of national redemption and hope. A thick 655 rough cut pages with b/w archive photos, maps.


£25 NOW £7


76069 COLLINS HANDY ROAD ATLAS IRELAND


by Collins Roadcheck A handy 64 page softback covering both Northern Ireland and Eire, plus city plans of Belfast, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Limerick and Derry/ Londonderry, places of interest like Belfast Cathedral, potteries and visitor centres, the Burren, Carrick Fergus and other wonderful castles,


cathedrals, caves, monasteries, houses, the Giant’s Causeway, Kells Priory, Killarney National Park, nature reserves and right out to the Wicklow Mountains National Park, plus Blue Flag and Green Coast beaches. Main maps are at nine miles to one inch. Colour. ONLY £2


75967 WALKING WITH THE WOUNDED: The Incredible Story of Britain’s Bravest Warriors and the Challenge of


a Lifetime by Mark McCrum This remarkable book tells the inspiring story of how four soldiers who had suffered devastating injuries in recent conflicts set out on a challenge to trek 200 miles, unsupported, to the North Pole. Eventually, the final team was


fixed: the two founders, four wounded soldiers, a polar guide and their patron, Prince Harry. Once they had ventured inside the Arctic Circle, they had to contend with pulling sleds weighing more than 100 kg over vast swaths of ice rubble, pressure ridges and dangerous open water ‘leads’. The ground could literally tear itself apart beneath them as they slept. There was constant daylight and temperatures plummeting to 35 degrees below zero. They returned as heroes, having proved that strength of mind can be every bit as powerful as strength of body. 307 paperback pages, colour photos. £13.99 NOW £3


75810 MEANDER: East to West Along a Turkish River by Jeremy Seal


Jeremy Seal decided to traverse the length of the River Meander by inflatable canoe. On arrival in the cosmopolitan region known to the Romans as Apamea, Seal immediately commandeered the assistance of local defence lawyer and amateur historian Mehmet Truehero, who was only too ready to leave a client mid- interview to help Seal prospect the river’s headwaters in the Dinar area. Their researches were hampered by the river’s plunge underground and also by the language reforms of Turkey’s first President Kemal Ataturk, in consequence of which, for example, King Xerxes’s pleasure palace was now designated “the place of small chickens”. Seal decides to launch his canoe at the confluence of several tributaries, but first he must buy a trowel with campsite sanitary arrangements in mind. Although he is a fluent Turkish speaker, this proves more difficult than expected as the locals think he is a treasure hunter, and meanwhile everything in the neighbourhood stops for the weekly episode of gangland thriller Wolves’ Valley. The journey through some of Turkey’s most spectacular scenery is on. 401pp, photos. £16.99 NOW £6


75836 THIN PATHS: Journeys In and Around


an Italian Mountain Village by Julia Blackburn Just before the millennium, Julia Blackburn and her husband moved to a little house in the mountains of Northern Italy. It was remote, but surrounded by a tracery of narrow paths. One path went steeply down to a village. Others zigzagged their way to scattered huts and stone shelters, to caves where you could hide in times of danger, and to unexpected lookout points. She arrived as a stranger, of course, but a series of events brought her close to the old people of the village. This village was at the heart of the conflict between the Fascists and the Partisans, so they learnt about death and fear and hunger, and how men and women could hide like foxes in the mountains. They begged Julia to write it down for them because otherwise it would all be lost. 250 deeply moving pages, illus. £17.99 NOW £6


76175 TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO


ILLUSTRATED EDITION translated by Yule-Cordier


Marco Polo was only 17 when his father Niccolo, a Venetian merchant, took him on the second of his voyages of exploration, setting out from Venice to visit the Far East, which in Marco’s time, the 13th century, was under Mongol rule. Marco’s account was written many years later during a spell in prison. Most historians accept that Marco did get as far as China and observed Kublai Khan’s legendary summer palace at Shangdu, later immortalised by Coleridge as Xanadu. Marco’s story of his voyage has been put together from 150 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Marco admired the cultures he passed through, particularly Tabriz, the Mongol capital in Iran, with its multicultural population of traders. Always interested in sexual mores, he records an oasis along the Silk Roads where the inhabitants lent their wives to weary travellers. The Great Khan and his lavish entourage fascinated Marco, and he was particularly impressed by Hangzhou, the capital of the southern Song Dynasty, with its landscaped gardens and thriving arts and theatre scene. This attractively designed book prints Marco’s account together in the full Yule-Cordier translation, with beautiful colour reproductions of manuscripts and pictures. Sterling ‘Signature’ collectable edition, 26 x 23.8cm, 400pp, over 200 colour illustrations. £25 NOW £7.50


76626 SPANISH VOYAGE TO VANCOUVER & THE NORTHWEST COAST OF AMERICA by Cecil Jane


Published in 1971 by Nico Israel of Amsterdam complete with a folding map and six stunning engravings plus gatefold illustration, this book recounts the narrative of a voyage made in the year 1792 by the schooners Sutil and Mexicana to explore the strait of Fuca. Translated from the Spanish and with an introduction by Cecil Jane, it is a facsimile of the 1930 original Argonaut Press edition, here in fine leather binding with gold tooling. Beliefs in the existence of a strait uniting the Atlantic with that sea in which lay the Spice Islands was very prevalent following the discovery of the New World. Columbus himself on his last voyage directed his attention to the search for such a passage in the neighbourhood of Panama. Cortés had proceeded along the coast from Florida to Newfoundland, but here the work of exploration was practically abandoned by the Spaniards and passed into the hands of English, French, Dutch and Danes by whom the most important discoveries were made. The purpose of the Spanish expeditions was in general rather scientific than political or economic, primarily intended to advance geographical knowledge by the production of more accurate maps. Attention was devoted to the task of converting and civilising the natives, and Vancouver bears witness to this success which crowned the efforts of the fathers in this region. The excellent relations which generally subsisted between the Spaniards and the Indians disproves the charge that the aim was to exploit the


74703 COLUMBUS: The Four Voyages, 1492-1504


by Laurence Bergreen Drawing on vivid eyewitness reports, Columbus’ personal logbooks and the passionate letters he sent to his Spanish patrons King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, the author digs deep into the explorer’s overwrought psyche spinning an epic tale to match the events of an epic life. He recreates the terror and


thrill as Columbus and his men attempted to settle and conquer unknown territories, establishing a colony that became the town of Santo Domingo, yet at the same time provoking 50,000 natives to commit mass suicide. The voyages had profound consequences for human biology and culture, bringing maize and syphilis to Europe, and horses and alcoholism to America. Columbus was a self-promoting and ambitious entrepreneur but also a masterful seaman and a brilliant captain. After returning to Spain, he would sail back to the New World three more times in the span of only a decade, leading campaigns that grew more conflicted, violent and morally ambiguous. By the time they ended, he was broken in body and spirit, a hero undone by the tragic flaw of pride. This rich, engaging biography analyses the complex legacies of exploration - political, scientific and even medical - that continue to shape our lives today. 423 pages illus in colour and b/w. Maps. $35 NOW £5


73892 COLUMBUS: The Four Voyages, 1492-


1504 by Laurence Bergreen Colour artworks, maps and woodcuts. 423pp, paperback.


£10.99 NOW £4 75843 WILFRED THESIGER: The Life of the


Great Explorer by Alexander Maitland Sir Wilfred Thesiger’s life spanned most of the 20th century but he was an explorer in the Victorian mould, intrepid, courageous, curious and carried away by the landscapes, cultures and people he encountered on his travels. “Gentlemen don’t drive” he famously said, preferring to travel by camel, horse or on foot. Born in the British legation of Addis Ababa, Thesiger embarked on a life of exploration while he was at Oxford. He worked his way through the Mediterranean aboard a tramp steamer, and a few months later joined the Duke of Gloucester’s party attending the coronation of Haile Selassie in Abyssinia. In the 1930s he mounted an expedition to Danakil and then joined the Sudan political service, remaining there during the war. 1953 saw him farther afield in the Hindu Kush, Ladakh, Chitral and Pakistan, though as an ardent royalist he deeply regretted missing the coronation of Elizabeth II. Throughout his travels he wrote vivid letters to his mother. A year later he used Kabul as a base for a circular walk of 400 miles through Afghanistan. He spent over 20 years living among the pastoral Samburu in Kenya until returning to England in 1994. 528pp, maps and 250 stunning photos. $37.95 NOW £8.50


76146 WORLD POCKET ATLAS Scarlet red bonded leather cover, black elastic fastener, here are physical and political maps, world reference maps, key facts and figures and 20,000 index entries in a quality, heavyweight colour compact atlas. With thematic maps for climate, vegetation, population density and energy, and index of local country names, the coverage is for Europe, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Africa, North and Central America, South America and the Polar zones. 256pp, quality colour throughout. $13.95 NOW £5


57493 LIFE AND VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS


by Washington Irving


The trials and disappointments of the great explorer are graphically detailed in this biography first published in 1828, when Washington Irving was America’s most famous writer. People had thought it was only the great distance that made it impossible to reach Asia sailing west from Spain. No one had predicted that a vast continent stood in the way. And indeed, for Columbus himself, the revolution of understanding was too much to comprehend. He had counted on a new route to Asia that would bring him glory, riches and titles, and the thought of an unknown and undeveloped continent held no attractions. Paperback, 720 pages. ONLY £3.50


Travel and Places 29


latter. In the last period, which begins with the reign of Charles III, while attention was devoted to meeting the danger of Russian aggression and to developing the trade with the Philippines, in the closing years of the 18th century, Spanish navigators played an honourable and important role, far away from the acquisition of wealth and the bartering of furs. The schooners Sutil and Mexicana proceeded from Puerto de San Blas to Acapulco on a mission to aid two corvettes and we learn of their condition and equipment, communications, viceroys and commanders, dimensions and armaments. With all the detail of the sailors, wind speeds, ports and landmarks, nautical information and a wonderful description of Nootka Sound and Island where the islanders wore a cap of badger skin or hats made of white grass, their leather jackets made from hides of deer and where fishing and otter hunting demanded great agility and skill. All the different tribes are described and preserved. 142pp.


ONLY £12


73881 HENRY HUDSON: Dreams and Obsession by Corey Sandler


Like so many explorers, Henry Hudson was a driven man, and his tragic end, set adrift in Hudson’s Bay with his sons and a few loyal crew members, was the result of his determination to find the elusive north-west passage through to the Pacific. The author describes Hudson’s four voyages in the early 17th century, retracing his steps and undergoing the punishing conditions first hand. In 1607 and 1608 Hudson attempted to reach the Pacific by sailing up to the Arctic in his ship the Hopewell, first trying the western passage and then the eastern route north of Russia, but both times he encountered impenetrable ice. He spent a month in Novaya Zembla and also corresponded with John Smith, the explorer consolidating the English settlement at Jamestown in Virginia. Finally the ill-fated fourth voyage. 431pp, paperback, photos, maps. £14.95 NOW £2.50


75093 JOY UNCONFINED!: Lord Byron’s Grand Tour Re-


Toured by Ian Strathcarron When Lord Byron set off on a Grand Tour in 1809, he was accompanied by his faithful diarist Hobhouse, a valet, a pageboy, a butler and a mysterious German- speaking Farsi, not to mention numerous trunks of luggage. After landfall in Portugal and Gibraltar, the Princess Elizabeth docked in the


grand harbour of Valletta and Byron soon found himself embroiled in espionage. He was recruited by a wily spook called Spiridion Foresti, who calculated that the Ionian islands could be secured for the British from under the nose of the tyrant Ali Pasha. Meanwhile Byron was introduced to the fascinating Mrs Constance Spencer- Smith. When Constance herself was captured by the French she escaped from prison disguised as a boy. The author and his wife retrace the route taken by Byron. 263pp, colour photos. £19.99 NOW £3


74442 COLLINS WORLD ATLAS: Discover the World by Collins Maps


Big, clear colourful mapping extending over 64 pages in a very large 9" x 12" softback, here is an easy reference atlas for discovering the whole world. Clear up-to-date mapping, highly detailed references, flags and statistics for every country and over 10,000 places mapped and indexed. A great bargain price for this family reference book.


£8.99 NOW £4


74681 BRIEF HISTORY OF VENICE by Elizabeth Horodowich


The modern city of Venice exists on a series of interconnected islands in a lagoon in the North Adriatic. The central city is composed of about 120 islands, spanned and connected by more than 430 bridges that cross 170 canals or rii. The only piazza is that of San Marco, the city’s ceremonial and civic centre. In this colourful history, a leading expert on Venice tells the story of the city from its ancient origins and its early days as a multicultural trading place where Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together at the crossroads between East and West. She explores the often overlooked role of Venice alongside Florence and Rome, as one of the principal Renaissance capitals. She also looks at the threat from rising water levels. 250pp in paperback.


$13.95 NOW £4


74896 GRAND CANAL, GREAT RIVER: The Travel Diary of a Twelfth-Century Chinese Poet by Philip Watson


Readers must surely be tempted by this rich panorama of 12th century China, an exotic mixture of travelogue, politics and poetry. Between July and December 1170, Lu You, a Chinese poet, politician and historian, travelled from east to west China to take up an administrative post. His remarkable 1,800-mile journey took him from near modern Shanghai to Sichuan province, along the mighty Grand Canal, begun in the 6th century and today the oldest and longest canal in the world, and up the Yangzi River through the famous Yangzi Gorges. He kept a daily record of his experiences, the people he met, the unfolding and ever-changing landscape and the famous historical sites, shrines, monasteries and pavilions. 256 pages illus in colour. Map. £20 NOW £6


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36