Here are the books for explorers, life-long wanderers, and those with an insatiable curiosity for elsewhere.
You may find inspiration in the writings of the late Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy, setting off across the world on her bicycle, equipped with "just a change of underwear and a pistol" (the pistol coming in handy when she was nearly eaten by a pack of wolves.) Or perhaps the great Colin Thubron, whose book The Amur River traces his journey across the Mongolian and Siberian landscape at age 80. Or the indomitable joie de vivre of the extraordinary Taiwanese writer Sanmao, who chronicled her years spent living in the disputed Sahara desert territory in the 1970s.
Here you can follow their adventures, and perhaps start to plan some of your own...
Middleland
Rory Stewart
Overnight
Dan Richards
Michael Palin in Venezuela
Michael Palin
The Discovery of Britain
Graham Robb
The Sound of Many Waters
Robin A. Crawford
Upon A White Horse
Peter Ross
The Place of Tides
James Rebanks
The North Sea
Alistair Moffat
Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave
Mariana Enriquez
Wolf Moon
Arifa Akbar
Moonlight Express
Monisha Rajesh
Always Home, Always Homesick
Hannah Kent
Peach Street to Lobster Lane
Felicity Cloake
Drifting North
Dominic Hinde
The North Road
Rob Cowen
Travels with Agatha Christie
David Suchet
The Bridge Between Worlds
Gavin Francis
Green Mountains
Caroline Eden
Between Britain
Alistair Moffat
Little Ruins
Manni Coe
Seriously British
Fred Sirieix
The Jackfruit Chronicles
Shahnaz Ahsan
The Drowned Places
Damian Le Bas
False Calm
Maria Sonia Cristoff
Fenwomen
Mary Chamberlain
The Highlands and Islands of Scotland
Alistair Moffat
The Lost Flock
Jane Cooper
Pathfinding
Kerri Andrews
Pathless Forest
Chris Thorogood
The Roma
Madeline Potter
Stone Voices
Neal Ascherson
The Wild Places
Robert Macfarlane
Enchanted Ground
Steven Lovatt
In Green
Louis D. Hall
Lifelines
Julian Hoffman
Mediterranea
Anastasia Miari
Rural Hours
Harriet Baker
Cold Kitchen
Caroline Eden
Night Train to Odesa
Jen Stout
One Woman Walks Europe
Ursula Martin
Our Island Stories
Corinne Fowler
The Path of Light
Anthony Seldon
A Quiet Evening
Norman Lewis
Anima
Kapka Kassabova
Cloudless
Rupert Dastur
The Cuckoo's Lea
Michael J. Warren
Empire Antarctica
Gavin Francis
The Future of Travel
Letters From Everest
George Mallory
Palestine Unwrapped
Kirsty Le Grice
Storm Pegs
Jen Hadfield
Ubac and Me
Cédric Sapin-Defour
The City and the World
Gregor Hens
The Cove
Beth Lynch
Fallen
Mick Conefrey
Free Ride
Noraly Schoenmaker
The Half Bird
Susan Smillie
Homage to Barcelona
Colm Tóibín
Remembering Peasants
Patrick Joyce
Slow Trains Around Britain
Tom Chesshyre
Small Earthquakes
Shafik Meghji
Somebody Told Me
Danny Wallace
To Have or To Hold
Sophie Pavelle
The Untold Railway Stories
Monisha Rajesh
Wayfarer
Phoebe Smith
Wild Woman
Philippa Forrester
Among the Believers
V.S. Naipaul
Bad Blood
Colm Tóibín
BOWIELAND
Peter Carpenter
Bread and War
Felicity Spector
Brightening from the East
Ken Worpole
Cypria
Alex Christofi
The Edge of Silence
Neil Ansell
Everest the Hard Way
Chris Bonington
Extreme Rock
Grant Farquhar
Finding Lights in a Dark Age
Chris Smaje
The Hopeless Biker
Miles Morland
An Inconvenience of Penguins: Epic voyages in pursuit of the world's most beloved bird
Jamie Lafferty
Monsterland
Nicholas Jubber
My Head For A Tree
Martin Goodman
The North Pole
Erling Kagge
Patria
Laurence Blair
Walking Europe's Last Wilderness
Nick Thorpe
The Snow Geese
William Fiennes
A Training School for Elephants
Sophy Roberts
To The City
Alexander Christie-Miller
Maurice and Maralyn
Sophie Elmhirst
Türkiye
Julian Sayarer
Under a Metal Sky
Philip Marsden
The Way of the Waves
Martin Dorey
We're Alone
Edwidge Danticat
A Bookseller Recommends...
Overnight
Dan Richards
There is something special about the night. For many, just the idea of it conjures thoughts of starlit skies, romance, refuge, of being tucked up in bed.
Overnight is a celebration of all things nocturnal, of those who labour while the rest of us sleep: the bakers, health workers, sailors, couriers, broadcasters, drivers, fishers, the emergency services and more. And it is also a hymn to nighttime wildlife, dreams and art. We'll hang out with bats and look at the stars. We'll learn what Moomintroll has to teach us. We'll travel by ship, train, racing car and foot...
A Bookseller Recommends...
Michael Palin in Venezuela
Michael Palin
In February 2025, Michael Palin travelled to Venezuela to get a sense of what life is like in one of South America's most culturally rich, vibrant but also troubled nations.
In the journal he kept during his trip he gives a vivid account of the towns and cities he visited, the landscapes he travelled through, and the people he met.
Illustrated throughout with colour photographs taken on the trip, and permeated with his warmth and humour, this is a vivid and varied portrait of a complex country from the best-selling author and beloved travel writer.
A Bookseller Recommends...
A Training School for Elephants
Sophy Roberts
In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa’s resources. The key to cracking open the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants — if only he could train them.
And so he commissioned the charismatic Irish adventurer Frederick Carter to ship four tamed Asian elephants from India to the East African coast, where they were marched inland towards Congo. The ultimate aim was to establish a training school for African elephants.
Roberts digs deep into historic records to reckon with our broken relationship with animals, revealing an extraordinary — and enduring — story of colonial greed, ineptitude, hypocrisy and folly.
A Bookseller Recommends...
Walking Europe's Last Wilderness
Nick Thorpe
An evocative voyage through the Carpathian mountain range and its threatened landscape, peoples, and history
Journeying from the banks of the Danube to Transylvania, Nick Thorpe guides us through the history and ecology of the watershed of Europe, between the Black Sea and the Baltic. For a thousand years the Carpathians have been a place of refuge, of identity and belonging, where powerful rulers and dynasties fought to gain control over rich gold seams and the unruly inhabitants of strategic valleys. Today, its inhabitants struggle to protect its vast forest habitat from urban sprawl as well as logging.
Drawing on interviews with shepherds, foresters and loggers, and his four decades of experience in the region, Thorpe sheds light on a neglected part of Europe—where bears, wolves, chamois, and lynxes still roam.
A Woman in the Polar Night
Christiane Ritter
Notes from an Island
Tove Jansson and Tuulikki Pietilå
A Philosophy of Walking
Frédéric Gros
The Curtain and the Wall
Timothy Phillips
Following Miss Bell
Pat Yale
A Voyage For Madmen
Peter Nichols
A Month in Siena
Hisham Matar
The Walker
Matthew Beaumont
Osebol
Marit Kapla
Driving Home
Jonathan Raban
Stories of the Sahara
Sanmao
Nothing To Envy
Barbara Demick
Starlight Wood
Fiona Sampson
High
Erika Fatland
In Patagonia
Bruce Chatwin
Stasiland
Anna Funder
The Outrun
Amy Liptrot
Cairn
Kathleen Jamie
America Day by Day
Simone de Beauvoir
The Old Ways
Robert Macfarlane
To the River
Olivia Laing
The Marches
Rory Stewart
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
Laurie Lee
Michel the Giant
Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Madhouse at the End of the Earth
Julian Sancton
Paris
Julian Green
Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
The Virago Book Of Women Travellers.
Mary Morris
