TEL 020 74 74 24 74 FREE P&P on orders Over £30 20-27th March 76612 INTO THE SILENCE: The Great War,


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Mallory: and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis


76310 LONELY PLANET LONDON: Special Collector’s Edition


by Damian Harper, Steve Fallon et al You will never tire of the great city of London and here are all the neighbourhoods at a glance - the West End, the City, Southbank, Kensington and Hyde Park, Clerkenwell, Shoreditch and Spitalfields, the East End and Docklands, Hampstead and North London, Notting Hill and West London, Greenwich and South London, Richmond, Kew and Hampton Court. Plus day trips from London, a top 16, need-to-know, top itineraries, month-by-month, whizz kids, explore like a local, for free, plus eating and drinking, night life, gay and lesbian, entertainment, shopping, sports and activities. With a little bit of history, architecture, literary London, theatre and dance, art and fashion, the music scene and film and media thrown in. And a city map folded, easily removed from this colourful 464 page softback. ONLY £6


76312 LONELY PLANET PARIS: Special Collector’s Edition


by Catherine le Nevez, Christopher Pitts et al The Eiffel Tower, the Champs-Elysées and Grande Boulevards, the Louvre and Les Halles, Montmartre and Northern Paris, Le Marais and Ménilmontant, Bastille and Eastern Paris, the Islands, the Latin Quarter, St-Germain and Les Invalides, Montparnasse and Southern Paris, plus day trips, top itineraries, the top 16, museums and galleries, what to see for free, nightlife and drinking, shopping and entertainment, sports and activities. Plus a little bit of history, fashion, architecture, literary Paris, painting and the visual arts and music and cinema. The survival guide covers a directory A-Z, transport and language. From the famous series, this one also includes a Paris city map with top sights, full street index and transport map. 432pp, colour maps and photos. Paperback. ONLY £6


76311 LONELY PLANET NEW YORK CITY:


Special Collector’s Edition by Brandon Presser et al


Get the best out of a trip to New York City, the Big Apple, with this tried and tested handbook. The top 16 suggestions include Central Park, classic New York eats, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, Brooklyn Bridge, the Museum Mile, the inverted ziggurat designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, MoMA, the High Line which is the disused railway track offering fantastic views during a quiet stroll, Williamsburg, jazz in the West Village, and good old Times Square. With a great section on what’s new, cutting edge design, Eataly, the largest Italian greengrocer in the entire world, east meets west on a plate at Chinese Cottage, and a boutique hotel in Harlem, Northern Star. With all the neighbourhoods at a glance, plus an understanding of the history, arts, architecture, NYC on screen and painting the town pink. Packed with maps in colour, best times and places to go, and a removable New York City map with top sights, full street index and transit map. 456pp in paperback. ONLY £6


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 £1.75


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


76509 KEEPING UP WITH THE GERMANS: A History of


Anglo-German Encounters by Philip Oltermann 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


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. 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. 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. 655 roughcut pages, archive photos, maps. £25 NOW £7


38951 TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR OF AFRICA by Mungo Park


In 1975, Mungo Park, a 24-year-old Scottish surgeon, set out from the Gambia to trace the course of the Niger, a river of which Europeans had no first-hand knowledge. This is his journal of the extraordinary journey. He travelled on the sufferance of African rulers and soon came to depend for his survival on the charity of African villagers. Before he reached the Niger, he endured months of captivity in the camp of a Moorish chief. His subsequent misadventures included being robbed and stripped naked by Fulani bandits. Yet, throughout his travels, Park maintained a remarkable empathy for African societies and beliefs. He recorded what he saw as accurately as he could, and without presuming European superiority. He prefaced his journal with the disclaimer that it ‘has nothing to recommend it but truth. It is a plain unvarnished tale, without any pretensions of any kind…’ Paperback. 448pp. ONLY £4


75103 TOKYO: A Cultural and Literary History


by Stephen Mansfield


From its obscure origins as a fishing village along a marshy estuary, Tokyo has grown into one of the world’s largest and most culturally vibrant metropolises. In the backstreets can be found wooden temples, fox shrines, mouldering steles and statues of Bodhisattvas that evoke a different age. This is a city of literature, inspiring authors like Murakami Haruki, of art, producing print masters Hokusai Hiroshige and Utamaro, and of the distinguished Kabuki theatre. It is a city of jaw- dropping, postmodernist architecture, but also a city of calamities such as the great fires of the Edo period, the floods, famines, typhoons and earthquakes. 268 paperback pages. Index of places and landmarks, illus. £12 NOW £3.50


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 £2.50


75095 ON THE ROAD TO BABADAG: Travels


in the Other Europe by Andrzej Stasiuk Poland’s leading travel writer Stasiuk has a superb ability to conjure up the essence of a location with a small telling detail. Following the trail of Adam Bodor’s bestselling Sinistra District he conjures up the Transylvanian warlord Coca and his rival Mukkerman. Driving southwest he asks the inhabitants if he is in Ukraine or Russia, but even they do not seem to be sure. The train between Budapest and Gonc runs through forests and limitless sunflowers, and at Szerencs the station is next to the biggest chocolate factory in Hungary. Finally he finds that ‘Albania is loneliness’. 255pp, map.


! £14.99 NOW £3.50 75099 AT THE KREMLIN GATES: A Historical


Portrait of Moscow by Gerald R. Skinner A portrait of Moscow through time but with one constant, the Kremlin, which has been at once the supreme metaphor of State power and also a symbol of Russian national identity. The tension between Moscow as an urban community and the Moscow of empire and belief is fundamental to the city’s narrative. By tradition, the city is the easternmost bastion of western civilization. If Moscow has endured barely imaginable catastrophes, it has also been the scene of creative brilliance. This gripping book seeks to reconcile the differing images he had of the city before, during and after communism. 396 paperback pages, illus, chronology.


£14.99 NOW £3.50 75102 ATHENS: A Cultural and Literary


History by Michael Llewellyn Smith As British ambassador to Athens in the late 20th century, Michael Llewellyn Smith knows all the layers of invasion and occupation that have left their traces. Dominated by the classical city, Athens nowadays has


little evidence of the Byzantines, Franks, Catalans and Florentines who created their own culture and architecture in the Middle Ages, although next to the magnificent cathedral there is the Byzantine Little Cathedral, its west front decorated with marble animals and signs of the zodiac rifled from more opulent buildings. Olympic Athens, the Colonels, and the modern city are all unpacked for our enjoyment. 257pp, paperback, line drawings. £12 NOW £2.50


75472 ODD MAN OUT IN THE ALPS


by Sir Ron Norman OBE The francophile author is not only a wayside gourmet but also part ornithologist, part zoologist, and part botanist, with a historical curiosity that is insatiable. As a distinguished engineer, whose work on the hyperbolic paraboloid roof on the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington is much admired,


readers would perhaps not suspect the hidden depths of idiosyncratic fun in his writing. This makes for all the more pleasure in his account of two summers’ worth of walks following the Grand Randonée Cinq from Lake Geneva to Nice. He is contented in his memories of Mont Blanc, clematis, edelweiss, ibex and black woodpeckers. 215 pages with line drawings and colour plates.


£16.95 NOW £3.50


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. 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 £5.50


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. She arrived as a stranger, of course, but a series of events brought her close to the old people of


Columbus & His Voyages 76932 COLUMBUS AND THE


QUEST FOR JERUSALEM by Carol Delaney


Columbus’s discovery of America is a key date in world history, but Columbus himself did not realise that he had discovered a new continent; he thought that he had gone round the world and reached Asia by a back route. Columbus was a driven man, but it was not the excitement of discovery that


drove him but the prospect of riches, though far from wanting to become personally wealthy he was seeking money to finance a new crusade to Jerusalem. By the mid-15th century both Jerusalem and Constantinople had fallen to the Ottomans, leaving merchants from Genoa, Columbus’s home town, cut off from the trading routes that had made the city one of the richest on the Mediterranean. The 15th century was a time of millennial fervour, when it was widely believed among Christians that the Apocalypse, or Second Coming, would happen soon and that it was important to spread the Christian kingdom, if necessary by force, in order to be saved. When Columbus returned to his patrons Ferdinand and Isabella of Castile, bringing with him six Native Americans, or Indians, the royal couple gave him instructions for administering the colony on his return, while thousands of men applied to accompany him. Columbus’s four voyages finally led to disagreement with his patrons, and he was dismissed with his grand vision of Christian conquest unrealised. 319pp, illus. £20 NOW £4.50


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


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


Travel & Places 27


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 £5.75 56596 SHACKLETON: Heart


of the Antarctic and South introduced by Dr Beau Riffenburgh


Ernest Shackleton led two Antarctic expeditions, and died shortly after the beginning of the third. His first expedition was not a total success and the second was, in some senses, a total failure (they never reached the Antarctic mainland at all). Yet it is the second for which


he is remembered. His expedition ship Endurance was trapped, then crushed in the ice, before his party could be landed, leaving his men in a hopeless situation. For months Shackleton held his party together before taking to boats and bringing everyone to safety to Elephant Island. His open-boat journey to South Georgia, and the eventual rescue of the party left behind, are now legendary. 768 pages in paperback. ONLY £3.50


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. 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


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 £4.50


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. Attention was devoted to the task of converting and civilising the natives. 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. Their leather jackets were made from hides of deer and fishing and otter hunting


demanded great agility and skill. All the different tribes are described and preserved. 142pp. ONLY £11


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