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During the war, Gerald Hanley spent several years in the remote and scorching deserts of Somalia. The rigours of living in such heat, and the difficulties of attempting to control blood-feuding nomads, led to the suicide of seven fellow-officers. Despite these problems, Gerald Hanley writes with great affection for the local clans, an affection that is untainted by sentimentality. "Of all the races of Africa, there cannot be one better to live among than the most difficult, the proudest, the bravest, the vainest, the most merciless, the friendliest: the Somalis."

Mungo Park's account of his journeys into West Africa in 1795 and again in 1805 provided Europeans with their first reliable description of the interior of the continent. Though he failed in the object of his mission – to chart the course of the Niger River – he succeeded in leaving a unique record of everyday life before the exploitation of Africa by Europeans, as valuable today as it was then. His first-hand experiences of tribal justice, gold mining and the slave trade are recorded, as well as his own understated heroism, a story of courage, open-hearted friendship and betrayal.

Winston Churchill wrote this account of the first 25 years of his life in 1930. It reveals him struggling with Latin grammar at prep school, charging the Dervishes at Omdurman and preparing his first political speech for a Conservative fete.

the greatest Moroccan travel book of all time:vital reading for the new upmarket Marrakesh tourism - one of the bibles of British twentieth-century Orientalism - by the author of A Ring of Bright Water - describes the extraordinary medieval nature of Morocco in the twentieth century, focussing on a family who combined the lethal elegance of gangland mobsters with the opulent charm of hereditary Indian princes, fed by a monopoly in drugs and prostitution - a perennial classic for the backlist which will sell and sell - POS material available

A Cult Classic, "The Way of the World" is one of the most beguiling travel books ever written. Reborn from the ashes of a Pakistan rubbish heap, it tells of a friendship between a writer and an artist, forged on an impecunious, life-enhancing journey from Serbia to Afghanistan in the 1950s. On one level it is a candid description of a road journey, on another a meditation on travel as a journey towards the self, all written by a sage with a golden pen and a wide infectious smile. It is published here for the first time in English with the Vernet drawings which are such a dynamic part of its whole.

James Cameron admired Martha Gellhorn above all other war-reporters 'because she combined a cold eye with a warm heart'. The Chicago Times described her writing as 'wide ranging and provocative, a blend of cool lyricism and fiery emotion, alternately prickly and welcoming, funny and stern'. But make your own judgements, and in the process find yourself plunged straight back into Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, feel the frozen ground of the Finno Russian war, the continent-wide Japanese invasion of China, the massacres in Java, the murderously naive intervention in Vietnam and the USA's dirty little wars in Central America. You will also experience the process of the Second World War by the seat of your pants. It is a tough way to learn history, but also one created in bite-sized chunks, that inspire just as often as they shock.

Having learned to appreciate Muslim life while living in Pakistan, Peter Mayne settled down to live in the back streets of Marrakesh in the 1950s. Rather than watch from the shelter of a hotel terrace, he rented rooms, learned the language, made friends, and became embroiled in conspiratorial picnics, hashish-laced dinners and in the enchantments and misunderstandings of the street, with its festivals, love affairs, potions and gossip. By turns used, abused and cherished by his neighbours, Mayne wrote their letters for them and captured the essence of their lives in this affectionate and hilarious account.

Martha was the youngest of sixteen, handpicked reporters who filed accurate, confidential reports on the human stories behind the statistics of the Depression directly to Roosevelt's White House. From these pages, we understand the real cost of sudden destitution on a vast scale. We taste the dust in the mouth, smell the disease and feel the hopelessness and the despair. And here, too, we can hear the earliest cadences of a writer who went on to become, arguably, the greatest female war reporter of the 20th century.

Fanny Parkes, who lived in India between 1822 and 1846, was the ideal travel writer - courageous, indefatigably curious and determinedly independent. Her delightful journal traces her journey from prim memsahib, married to a minor civil servant of the Raj, to eccentric, sitar-playing Indophile, fluent in Urdu, critical of British rule and passionate in her appreciation of Indian culture. Fanny is fascinated by everything, from the trial of the thugs and the efficacy of opium on headaches to the adorning of a Hindu bride. To read her is to get as close as one can to a true picture of early colonial India - the sacred and the profane, the violent and the beautiful, the straight-laced sahibs and the more eccentric "White Mughals" who fell in love with India and did their best, like Fanny, to build bridges across cultures.

Braving hunger, heat exhaustion, unbearable terrain and cultures largely untouched by civilization, Dervla Murphy chronicles her determined trip through nine countries, through snow and ice in the mountains and miles of barren land in the scorching desert. Full Tilt is a highly individual account by a celebrated travel writer based on the daily diary Murphy kept while riding through Yugoslavia, Persia, Afghanistan, over the Himalayas to Pakistan and into India. Murphy's charm and gracious sensitivity as a writer and a traveler reveals not only civilizations of exotic people and places but the wonder of a woman alone on an extraordinary adventure.

'Evliya Çelebi was the widest-eyed, most intensely curious … and prolific travelwriter the Ottoman world ever produced. A learned and perceptive gentleman-observer from courtly Istanbul at the height of its power, Evilya's work records and preserves an entire world otherwise lost to history. A proper edition of his massive work has long been overdue, and Robert Dankoff magnificently translates the highlights … a book which is likely to change for ever our perceptions of the Ottoman Empire.' — William Dalrymple

The novelist E. M. Forster opens the door on life in a remote Maharajah's court in the early twentieth century, a 'record of a vanished civilization.' Through letters from his time visiting and working there, he introduces us to a 14th century political system in 'the oddest corner of the world outside Alice in Wonderland' where the young Maharajah of Devas, 'certainly a genius and possibly a saint,' led a state centered on spiritual aspirations. The Hill of Devi chronicles Forster's infatuation and exasperation, fascination, and amusement at this idiosyncratic court, leading us with him to its heart and the eight-day festival of Gokul Ashtami, marking the birth of Krishna, where we see His Highness Maharajah Sir Tukoji Rao III dancing before the altar 'like David before the Ark.'‘A classic account of a vanished side of India that has never before been so graphically painted.’ – Raymond Mortimer, Sunday Times‘I spent a lot of time laughing, it’s so weird, and so very British and very Indian at the same time, and so much of what he writes feels very contemporary. For all these reasons, I really love this book.’ – Damon Galgut

The wittiest introduction to the life of a social anthropologist ever written. Studying in the Cameroons for his first experience of fieldwork, Barley discovers that the society of the Dowayo people refuses to conform to the rules of his new discipline. Although set amongst a little-known tribe in the Cameroons, this slim volume reaches out to a vast audience who would otherwise never look at a travel book about West Africa, let alone an anthropological field study. A seminal text for any student in search of a laugh. Witty, hilarious and unconventional, but also a remarkable intellectual achievement; Barley manages to turn the western science of anthropology on its head, so that for once the laugh is on the professional practitioners not the observed.

the best book on the Mafia in Sicily - its origins, its code of honour, its secrecy and its brutality. A chilling insight. - reveals how Mafia violence and corruption crept even into every aspect of Sicilian society, including the police and the church - and how this was only possible with the help of the American army, who gave the Mafia, by then all but destroyed by the Fascist government, the kiss of life when they occupied the island in 1943 - the perfect companion for any traveller to Sicily, and a gripping armchair read

In Sicily is a loving take on an extraordinary island, based on Norman Lewis's sixty-yearlong fascination with all things Sicilian! Few places on earth have escaped the singular eye of Norman Lewis, but always, in the course of his long career, he has come back to Sicily. From his first wartime visit – to a land untouched since the Middle Ages – through his frequent returns, he has watched the island and its people as they have changed over the years! Dedicated to a Sicilian journalist killed by a Mafia bomb, he rarely lets us forget the presence of organized crime. We benefit from his friendships with policemen, journalists and common people. Moreover, he writes beautifully of landscape and language, of his memories of his first father-in-law (professional gambler, descendant of princes and member of the Unione Siciliana), of Sicily's changing sexual mores, of the effects of African immigration, of Palermo and its ruined palaces – and of strange superstitions, of witches and bandits and murder.

Norman Lewis arrives in war-torn Naples as an intelligence officer in 1944. The starving population has devoured all the tropical fish in the aquarium, respectable women have been driven to prostitution and the black market is king. Lewis finds little to admire in his fellow soldiers, but gains sustenance from the extraordinary vivacity of the Italians. There is the lawyer who earns his living bringing a touch of Roman class to funerals, the gynaecologist who "specializes in the restoration of lost virginity" and the widowed housewife who times her British lover against the clock. "Were I given the chance to be born again," writes Lewis, "Italy would be the country of my choice."

If you want to know about writing, about how to make others share the horror and intensity of an experience, try the first piece in this collection, Justice at Night. Martha Gellhorn wrote it as a 28-year-old, having just returned home to the States after four years in Europe, in 1936. What follows is a selection of fifty years of peacetime journalism, history caught at the moment of its unfolding, as it looked and felt to those who experienced it. It's about revolutions in the making, guilty acts of state terrorism, poverty, injustice and recovery. It vividly captures the range and intensity of Gellhorn's courageous work and is also a passionate call to arms, not only to remember the wronged and to bear witness to evil, but to stand your ground in the face of it.

Kipling left the strong light and darkness of India aged just five, but fortunately for his future readers, returned home aged sixteen in 1882. I found myself at Bombay where I was born, moving among sights and smells that made me deliver in the vernacular sentences whose meaning I knew not. Other Indian-born boys have told me how the same thing happened to them. After these, my English years fell away, nor ever, I think, came back in full strength. Rudyard Kipling was immediately put to work, writing for such local newspapers as the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore and the Pioneer in Allahabad. The former appeared six days a week and would be remembered by Kipling as my mistress and most true love. Although worked hard, Kipling's need to write was unstoppable, and he published his first collection of verse as well as creating his celebrated short story collections. Right at the end of this five-year period of almost demonic literary energy he wrote nineteen extraordinarily vivid travel essays as he explored the independent Kingdoms of Rajasthan.

It took Kinglake seven years before he had finished crafting this `lively, brilliant and rather insolent tale. The physical details of the journey, undertaken in 1834 across the Balkan frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, through Constantinople, Smyrna, Cyprus into the Near eastern cities of Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus, are never as significant as the conversations, chance encounters and attitudes of the author. Packed full of an infectious charm and a youthful delight at the world, it is above all things funny as it lampoons the pomposity of earnest, middle?aged travellers seeking to establish themselves as professional authorities.

In a small medieval palace on Kathmandu's Durbar Square lives Nepal's famous Living Goddess - a child as young as three who is chosen from a caste of Buddhist goldsmiths to watch over the country and protect its people. To Nepalis she is the embodiment of Devi (the universal goddess) and for centuries their Hindu kings have sought her blessing to legitimize their rule. Legends swirl about her, for the facts are shrouded in secrecy and closely guarded by dynasties of priests and caretakers. How come a Buddhist girl is worshipped by autocratic Hindu rulers? Are the initiation rituals as macabre as they are rumoured to be? And what fate awaits the Living Goddesses when they attain puberty and are dismissed from their role? Weaving together myth, religious belief, modern history and court gossip, Isabella Tree takes us on a compelling and fascinating journey to the esoteric, hidden heart of Nepal. Through her unprecedented access to the many layers of Nepalese society, she is able to put the country's troubled modern history in the context of the complex spiritual beliefs and practices that inform the role of the little girl at its centre.Deeply felt, emotionally engaged and written after over a decade of travel and research, The Living Goddess is a compassionate and illuminating enquiry into this reclusive Himalayan country - a revelation.

The story of Koestler's imprisonment in France in 1940, his escape and his extraordinary and adventurous journey to the safety of London, which unfolds like some travel nightmare by Kafka. The 'scum of the earth' are those heroic individuals, like Koestler himself, who had fought the tide of fascism and come to live in liberal France under the mistaken impression that they would be safe.

A haunting and delicately observed description of the last days of Mandarin culture before the revolution, "Peking Story" is a testimony to a way of life, a culture, an aesthetic and a civilisation which has since completely disappeared. As the American son-in-law of a revered official from an ancient Chinese family, David Kidd had unqiue access to the life - their sprawling mansion, the visits to ancestral temples, the moonlit picnics, demure servants, opulent ceremonies, lavish entertainments and cherished antique heirlooms, such as the set of braziers which had never lost the heat of their original founding due to the meticulous care of successive generations of owners. But it is the brooding sense of the inevitability of great change, and Kidd's sympathy with many of the goals of the revolution, which transforms this memoir into something tragically profound.

This classic novel of colonial Ceylon (Sri Lanka), was first published in 1913 and is written by a prominent member of the Bloomsbury group, husband of Virginia Woolf. It reads as if Thomas Hardy had been born among the heat, scent, sensuality and pungent mystery of the tropics. Translated into both Tamil and Sinhalese, it is one of the best-loved and best-known stories in Sri Lanka. It includes a new biographical afterword by Sir Christopher Ondaatje, author of "Woolf in Ceylon", and a short story, "Pearls before Swine", which vividly draws on Woolf's experience as a young District Commissioner. This book reeks of first-hand knowledge of the colonial experience, and of its profound, malign disregard for the psychology and culture of its subject peoples.

Peter Goullart spent nine years in the all-but-forgotten Nakhi Kingdom of south west China. He had a job entirely suited to his inquiring, gossipy temperament: to get to know the local traders, merchants, inn-keepers and artisans to decide which to back with a loan from the cooperative movement. A Russian by birth, due to his extraordinary skill in language and dialects, Goullart made himself totally at home in Likiang, which had been ruled by Mandarin officials descended from ancient dynasties, and was visited by caravans of Tibetan and Burmese travelling merchants, and such mysterious local highland peoples as the Lobos. In his company we get to hear about the love affairs and social rivalries of his neighbours, to attend magnificent banquets, meet ancient dowagers and handsome warriors as well as to catch the sound of the swiftly running mountain streams, the coarse ribaldry of the market ladies and the happy laughter emerging from the wine shops. Through him we are able to travel back to this complex society, which believed simultaneously and sincerely in Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, in addition to their ancient Animism and Shamanism.

Gavin Maxwell was a romantic, self-destructive adventurer, brave and handsome, with a deep sympathy for the underdog, a wonderfully curious mind and a dogged commitment to discovering the truth. It was said of him that he was loved by women, had sex with men but his emotional life was ruled by animals. His father died in the trenches in the year of his birth, so he and his brothers enjoyed a wonderfully carefree childhood, living in passionate proximity to their mother, the widowed daughter of the Duke of Northumberland, in an isolated house on the south-west coast of Scotland. He became one of the most brilliant and quixotic of British travel-writers, who wrote about Iraq (where he travelled with Wilfrid Thesiger in 1956 and acquired his first otter), Sicily (where he befriended both Communist peasants and Mafia hitmen) and Morocco (where he spent six years chronicling the rise and fall of a Berber dynasty). But he would become even more famous for his trilogy of books set in the north-west coast of Scotland, which was a true fulfilment of his affinity with nature and a love of wild things, most especially otters.Despite the success of Ring of Bright Water, The Rocks Remain and Raven Seek thy Brother, the vast bulk of his life remained a closely guarded secret. He was by turns a shark-hunter, a wartime secret agent, portrait-painter, racing car-driver, naturalist, poet and a social renegade. Often poised on the edge of bankruptcy he could also be insanely profligate and generous.

'A valuable book and a necessary one. One of the funniest and cleverest voyages on record.' Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman'The finest writer afloat since Conrad.' Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Guardian'Unfailingly witty and entertaining.' Salman RushdieCoasting round Britain single-handed in an antique two-masted sailing boat, Jonathan Raban conducts a masterly exploration of England and the English at the time of Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands War. He moves seamlessly between awkward memories of childhood as the son of a vicar, a vivid chronicle of the shape-shifting sea and incisive descriptions of the people and communities he encounters. As he faces his terror of racing water, eddies, offshore sandbars and ferries on a collision course, so he navigates the complex and turbulent waters of his own middle age. Coasting is a fearless attempt to discover the meaning of belonging and of his English homeland.

The novel's ostensible story is secondary to the description of relationships within a small Southern-Italian community. Vailland makes us understand how everyone, monarchist lord of the manor, the amorous Donna Lucrezia, the wealthy racketeer, and the landless day-labourer, are all affected by the ancient complexities of an hierarchical society.

In 1903 Mary Mackenzie sails for China to marry the British Military Attache, a man who turns out to be every bit as chilly as the Peking Winter. During one of his many absences, Mary has an affair with a Japanese soldier, Count Kurihama, but her pregnancy is impossible to keep secret. Rejected by husband, mother and country, and forced to leave her daughter behind, Mary flees to Japan. The Ginger Tree tells the fascinating story of her survival, isolated and alone, in this alien culture.

These memoirs were discovered in the 1950s when the author's grandson was sifting material for Philip Mason's The Men Who Ruled India. Beames arrived in the sub-continent just after the Mutiny, and stayed for the next thirty-five years. Unlike most diarists of the Victorian Raj, he was completely outspoken and wrote plain lively prose. The result is probably the most vivid description of a District Officer's life in India.