Anthem Travel Classics – serie

This brilliant, vivid and impressionistic series of sketches, formed during her 1892 stay in Persia, is Gertrude Bell's first published work. Infused with a distinctive orientalism, 'Persian Pictures' is an evocative, virtuosic meditation, moving sinuously between Persia's heroic, complex, mythical past and its present decline; the public face of Tehran and the otherworldly 'secret, mysterious life of the East', the lives of its women, its enclosed, quasi-medieval gardens; from the bustling cities to the lonely wastelands of Khorasan. Bell's documentation of Muharram – the month of mourning for Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed – and Ramadan, display a mind finely attuned to the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity, East and West. 'Persian Pictures' is both travelogue and meditation, an elegiac and beautifully observed account of a spellbinding land.

'London: A Pilgrimage' was conceived in 1868 by the journalist and playwright Blanchard Jerrold. Accompanied by the famous artist Gustave Doré, Jerrold prowled every corner of the heaving metropolis, sometimes with plain-clothes police for protection. 'London: A Pilgrimage' is a forgotten classic of social journalism, a frank and brutal look at the poverty striken, gin-swilling London of the nineteenth century, written in a perceptive, bold and gripping style.

Both a thrilling exposé and a considered anthropological review, 'London’s Underworld' is driven by the author's conflicting feelings of admiration for the rebellious spirit which frees these criminals from the laws of reserved Victorian Society and also pity for the restless, violent attitudes which leave them stranded there alone.

A war correspondent's breathtaking account of early twentieth-century wars, including the Greek-Turkish War (1897) and the Spanish-American War (1898). These events have fallen into relative obscurity, following the two World Wars, yet remain important forces shaping modern politics. ‘Moments in Hell’ reveals the conflicting loyalties of the war correspondent, caught between political ideologies and personal suffering, and provides an enlightening background to recent conflicts.

‘How to Enjoy Paris in 1842’ covers a wide range of subjects, from the history of the great city to contemporary commerce, conveyed by a witty, often satirical narrative reminiscent of Jonathan Swift. The author guides the reader on a leisurely walk around the monuments and attractions of the capital, bringing to life a vibrant and mesmerising city.

A beguiling account of twentieth-century America through the eyes of an outsider, a remarkable inversion of the standard 'Westerner observing the exotic' travel writing formula. Wu Tingfang wrote this book at an intriguing juncture in history - aeroplanes and motion pictures had recently been invented, and while he did not know it, a tremendous cultural shift was about to take place in the West due to the First World War. His observations are enlightening and remain as relevant today as the era in which they were written.

A selection of ruminative nature writing on walking and the beauty of New England, here Thoreau’s characteristically wide-ranging and philosophical style offers a multitude of fascinating observations. Excursions presents Thoreau’s most studied and expansive collection of writing on the natural world. An early advocate of conservationism, he discusses here, in mesmerising prose, the complex but essential relationship between man and nature. This edition includes a remarkable ‘Biographical Sketch’ by Thoreau’s great contemporary and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson.