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The 1930s English language literary scene was awash with names of which we are still familiar today; EM Forster, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Wolf, Ernest Hemingway, Evelyn Waugh, F Scott Fitzgerald and William Somerset Maugham. Hemingway excepted, I’ve never read a novel by any of these authors and it is unlikely I will. Unfortunately movies basedContinue reading “The Travel Writings of William Somerset Maugham”

When Columbus stumbled upon the Americas it is suggested that his small library included not only a copy of Polo’s travels to Asia but also the account of a lesser known traveller, Sir John Mandeville. Sir John Mandeville tells us that he left his home from the north of France in 1322, made his wayContinue reading “The Travels of Sir John Mandeville”

Like Maritime ports throughout the world and across the centuries the Persian Gulf trade center of Siraf has welcomed captains, sailors and merchants to its eating establishments and cafes. In the tenth century during stopovers or throughout the off-season Persians, Arabs, Indian, Jews and perhaps even the occasional African, Chinese or Spaniard would gather forContinue reading “Captain Buzurg and the Wonders of India”

The Travel Writings of William Somerset Maugham With a companion the English novelist William Somerset Maugham was able to travel to a large part of the world in the first half of the twentieth century. Although meagre in his output, Maugham has left us with some accounts of these travels, more travel notes than travelContinue reading “Travellers of Note”

We have available to us numerous accounts in which storms, piracy, war and harsh conditions upon the sea are abundantly displayed throughout the ages, one experience which is seldom accounted is of sailing upon the oceans as a slave. Olaudah Equiano gives us an extremely rare vantage point in his Interesting Narrative which recounts hisContinue reading “Olaudah Equiano: The Experiences of a Slave at Sea”

Patrick Leigh Fermor waved goodbye to his friends on the Greenwich pier as he sailed for Holland. It was December 1933 and the start of a planned journey in which would take him through Holland, the early months of Nazi Germany, Austria, Hungary, into Romania and Transylvania, Bulgaria, Greece to his ultimate destination of Constantinople.Continue reading “In Praise of Idle Wandering: a Lament for the Gainfully Misemployed”

Below is a list of ten travellers which have been among my favourite reading over the years. There is no ranking to this list and they may or may not be amongst the greatest to have ever travelled, they are simply those that I have time and again returned to when I have thought aboutContinue reading “Ten Travellers you may want to Read”

Silk and spices were the known goods that traversed the Silk Road trade routes from China to India, religion is an often overlooked companion along these passages. Buddhist traders set out north from India across the Hindu Kush and Tian Shan mountains and traversing the Taklamakan desert to the far east of China. Buddhism arrivedContinue reading “Xuanzang”

Wilfred Thesiger provided an account of the loss of the cultures of the lands of east Africa and the near east, Alan Villiers provided us with the last days of the sea going sailing trade of the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the coast of East Africa. A thorough seafarer Villiers left his homeContinue reading “Alan Villiers”

Wilfred Thesiger was the toughest SOB to have ever put his wanderings to paper. In the 1940s and 50s Thesiger was willing to submit himself to extremely austere and dangerous circumstances that is beyond my ability and comprehension. His travel writings take us through the desert regions of Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia, the Marshlands ofContinue reading “Wilfred Thesiger”