Emma Thomson – författare

✨ Shortlisted for 2025 Travel Book of the Year at the Inspire Media Awards ✨Discover the world's most peaceful destinations.In Quiet Escapes, award-winning travel writer Emma Thomson curates 50 inspirational trips from across the globe, each carefully selected to help you find your Zen. Including a host of natural wilderness adventures, remote island retreats, sacred pilgrim routes and unexpected oases of quiet in urban areas, this definitive guide equips you with the very best places to unwind and enjoy some true quiet reflection.From stargazing in New Zealand to feeding mind, body and soul in Bali, an art safari in Zambia to a quiet city break in Switzerland, you will be spoilt for choice when planning your next calming escape.

This new second edition of Bradt's award-winning Northern Belgium: Flanders with Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp remains the only standalone guide to this enticing region, home to more Michelin-starred restaurants per head than France and the largest number of comic-strip cartoonists in the world. Bradt's Northern Belgium provides in-depth coverage of Brussels, including the outer communes that are often overlooked but are home to excellent off-the-beaten track eateries and kooky museums. The guide covers every inch of the region, from the sandy stretch of North Sea coast, through medieval cloth-spinning cities like Bruges and Ghent, to quaint villages. Features include eyewitness accounts of what it was like living under the control of the Germans during World War II, a rare interview with one of the 29 Cistercian monks at Sint-Sixtus abbey in Westvleteren who brew the revered Westvleteren Trappist beer, and a guest contribution from Tim Webb, author of the best-selling Good Beer Guide: Belgium, who has written the section on beer, covering the best local tipples and which brewery to visit to try them.Also new for this edition is information on the new Brussels Airlines ' Hi Belgium Pass', a nationwide Belgian rail pass and city pass, a focus on the best Christmas markets of northern Belgium, and details of new WWI information offices and permanent artworks. Restaurant listings have been completely revised to keep pace with Flanders' dynamic dining scene and there is a new feature on quirky accommodation options and museums, including Brussels' Underpants Museum! Carefully designed walking tours of Brussels city centre are featured, and the guide includes more maps of the area than any other. With festivals forming a major part of Flemish social life, an in-depth list of events is included, from the hip Pukkelpop festival to the best village fêtes. Flanders has one official national park and several nature reserves, and this guide offers more coverage of them than any other.Emma Thomson has lived in the country for nearly a decade and her first edition of this guide won Best Guidebook at the British Guild of Travel Writer Members' Awards.

Thoroughly updated for this new third edition, Bradt's World War I Battlefields remains the only compact practical travel guide to cover both French and Belgian battlefield sites involved in one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, which changed the face of foreign policy and European geography forever. The 2014-18 centenary of the First World War was a huge catalyst for battlefield tourism, leading to a proliferation of innovative new museums, memorials, commemorative trails, statues and more - which are comprehensively covered in this update. Co-authored by two award-winning travel writers, this lightweight and pocket-friendly guidebook is perfect for visitors. It covers all the main sites, memorials and museums of the entire Western Front alongside practical information such as travelling there and getting around, and how to book the best guided tours. In the Belgian section of the book, chapters cover Ypres and the Ypres Salient; Poperinge, Heuvelland and Messines (Mesen); Diksmuide, Veurne and Nieuwpoort; and Mons. In the French section, as well as the Somme, battlefields in Le Nord and Lille are featured, as are those in Pas-de-Calais; Aisne; and Marne, Champagne and Verdun. Visiting well-known Somme sights - such as Thiepval, the Somme 1916 Museum, Longueval, Le Hamel and Villers-Bretonneux - is a must for many visitors. But so, too, are Arras and the information centre dedicated to the Battle of Vimy Ridge, the Battle of Fromelles Museum, the Cambrai Tank 1917 museum, the Marne 14-18 Interpretation Centre, and the Sir John Monash Centre, which tells the story of Australian soldiers' Western Front experiences in both countries.This updated and expanded edition features new information on the valuable contribution made by Black, Indian and Caribbean soldiers. There is also refreshed, detailed advice on how to find the resting place of family members lost in battle. For history buffs, those on battlefield tours, relatives of those who fought, school groups and students, there is no finer guidebook to visiting Great War sites in both countries than Bradt's World War I Battlefields.