Six centuries ago, the Islamic world was the pinnacle of civilization. What was it really like? The answer is in the twelfth-century diaries of Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan traveler who spent thirty years journeying some 73,000 miles. Here, in this short-form book from acclaimed writer and bestselling author Jan Morris, in the little-known story of perhaps the greatest traveler of all time.

In 1955 the winds of change were beginning to blow across the Sultanate of Oman, a hitherto truly medieval state. Rumours of subversion mingled with the unsettling smell of oil to propel the Sultan on a royal progress across the desert hinterland, from his southern capital of Salala to the northern capital of Muscat. It was an historic journey – the first crossing of the Omani desert by motorcar. Jan Morris accompanied His Highness Sultan Said bin Taimur as a professional observer, and was...

A travel writing classic ready to be rediscovered, Europe in the Looking Glass describes, with a mixture of laugh-out-loud humour and perceptive commentary on art and architecture, how three rich young Englishmen cross pre-World-War-Two Europe in an old car. Best known as the author of The Road to Oxiana, published in 1937, Robert Byron developed his considerable writing skills on a travel book which has not been in print since 1926. Europe in the Looking Glass describes a journey Byron ma...

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisherHumorous tales of travel and misadventure.Lonely Planet knows that some of life's funniest experiences happen on the road. Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, they can give birth to our most found travel lessons, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories.These 31 globegirdling tales that run the gamu...

'Bedford's ability to recreate landscape is matched only by her appetite for mouth-watering descriptions of exotic food . . . She cannot write a dull page.' -- Financial Times 'The Naples boat was on time. Lightly one stepped ashore, and, after a brief, slow ascent, emerged into Piazza still warm under a late afternoon sun.' In these eight evocative and transcendent essays, Sybille Bedford chronicles her adventures through Europe over a thirty year period. With her elegant prose and razor ...

This autobiographical coming of age classic offers a "visceral, comic and tragic" portrait of rural life in Wales during the Great War ( The Guardian, UK).Named the greatest Welsh novel by the Wales Arts Review, this beautifully rendered novel tells of a boy's hardscrabble life in rural Wales and his challenging—yet at times transcendent—journey into adulthood. In the 1910s, the village of Bethesda is a place of poverty and religion; illn...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice SelectionRiffing on cats and Brexit, the Royals and the annoyances of aging, the nonagenarian Jan Morris delights with her wickedly hilarious first-ever diary collection.Celebrated as the “greatest descriptive writer of her time” (Rebecca West), Jan Morris has been dazzling readers since she burst on the scene with her on-the-spot reportage of the first ascent of Everest in 1953. Now, th...

Jan Morris tells the epic story of the rise of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria in 1837 to her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. In this celebrated masterwork she vividly evokes every aspect of the 'great adventure', ranging from ships and botanical gardens to hill stations and sugar plantations, as she traces the impact of empire on places as diverse as Sierra Leone and Fiji, Zululand and the Canadian prairies.The Pax Britannica Trilogy also includes Pa...

I was three or perhaps four years old when I realized that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl.The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. He distinguished himself as a wartime soldier and became one of the century's most daring reporters, climbing mountains and crossing deserts. To all appearances, he was happily married with several children.But appearances can be misleading. James had known since childh...

Jan Morris's magnificent book celebrates Wales and all things Welsh. Written as a deeply personal study, it reflects the rich bilingual literature and folklore of Wales, the buildings and wonderfully varied landscapes, the national character and humour, the historical predicaments and the political condition of this small but extraordinary country. Jan Morris is a distinguished historian as well as being one of the world's leading travel-writers. Her passionate love of Wales makes this a u...

'Almost nothing in life is only what it seems.'Soldier, journalist, historian, author of forty books, Jan Morris led an extraordinary life, witnessing such seminal moments as the first ascent of Everest, the Suez Canal Crisis, the Eichmann Trial, The Cuban Revolution and so much more. Now, in Allegorizings, published posthumously as was her wish, Morris looks back over some of the key moments of her life, and sees a multitude of meanings.From her final tra...

In 1912, a young D.H. Lawrence left England for the first time and travelled to northern Italy. He spent nearly a year on the shores of Lake Garda, lodged in elegantly decaying houses set amid lemon groves and surrounded by the fading life of traditional Italy. This is a travel book unlike any other, where landscapes and people are backdrops to Lawrence's deeper wanderings - into philosophy, opinion, life, nature, religion and the fate of man. With sensuous descriptions of late harvests, d...