Tourism History

For many years, Saint-Germain-des-Pres has been a stronghold of sans culottes, a refuge to artists, a paradise for bohemians. It's where Marat printed L'Ami du Peuple and Thomas Paine wrote The Rights of Man. Napoleon, Hemingway, and Sartre have all called it home. Descartes is buried there. Now best-selling author and Paris expert John Baxter takes listeners on a narrative tour of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, which is also where Baxter makes his home.

Cider is the quintessential American beverage. Drank by early settlers and founding fathers, it was ubiquitous and pervasive, but following Prohibition when orchards were destroyed and neglected, cider all but disappeared. In The Cider Revival, Jason Wilson chronicles what is happening now, an extraordinary rebirth that is less than a decade old.

A reportage from the turbulent, chaotic birth of the free Angola; the author calls it his “first real book”. Ryszard Kapuściński arrives to a country divided by two armies. For some time he's the only foreign correspondent there. Among the unbelievable chaos, he meets more and more people whose fates become the illustration of the cruelty of war. This book is a unique combination of war reportage with literary artistry - so characteristic of Ryszard Kapuściński.

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor.

In 1815 the Battle of Waterloo brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars and the European continent opened up once again to British tourists. The nineteenth century was to be an age driven by steam technology, mass-industrialisation and movement, and, in the footsteps of the Grand Tourists a hundred years earlier, the British middle-classes flocked to Europe to see the sights. In Tourists, the voices of these travellers – puzzled, shocked, delighted and amazed – are brought vividly to life.

Through the stories of fellow travelers, Greene explores the challenges and opportunities facing the new Russia: a nation that boasts open elections and newfound prosperity yet still continues to endure oppression, corruption, and stark inequality. Set against the wintery landscape of Siberia, Greene’s lively travel narrative offers a glimpse into the soul of 20th century Russia: how its people remember their history and look forward to the future.

In To the Island of Tides, Alistair Moffat travels to - and through the history of - the fated island of Lindisfarne. Walking from his home in the Borders, through the historical landscape of Scotland and northern England, he takes us on a pilgrimage in the footsteps of saints and scholars, before arriving for a secular retreat on the Holy Isle. To the Island of Tides is a meditation on the power of place, but also a more personal journey - a chance for a personal stocktaking and a reflection on where life leads us.

The Huck Finn of foreign correspondents provides a colorful account of old Honolulu, the island nobility, the City of Refuge on the Kona coast, and the active volcano of Kilauea. These selections of Mark Twain's newspaper dispatches are both charming and informative. The light touch of the great humorist is seldom missing as he reveals the "loveliest fleet of islands that lie anchored in any ocean".

Armed only with college Arabic and restless curiosity, Adam Valen Levinson set out to "learn about the world 9/11 made us fear." From a base in globalized and sterilized Abu Dhabi, he sets out to lunch in Taliban territory in Afghanistan, travels under the watchful eye of Aleppo's secret police, risks shipwreck en route to Somalia, investigates Yazidi beliefs in a sacred cave, cliff-dives in Oman, celebrates New Year's Eve in Tahrir Square, and, at every turn, discovers a place that matches not at all with its reputation.

Delhi exists in a kind of quantum state: In Delhi, all things are true at once. When the Big Apple no longer felt big enough, Dave and Jenny moved to a city of 16 million people and, seemingly, twice that many horns honking at once. Delirious Delhi depicts India's capital as the two experienced it, from office life in the rising tech hubs to the traffic jam philosophy that keeps people sane in the gridlock leading to them. With only their sense of humour as their guide, Dave and Jenny set out to explore a city in which ancient stone monuments compete with glass-clad shopping malls to define the landscape.

The Fens is Britain's most distinctive, complex, man-made and least understood landscape. Francis Pryor has lived in, excavated, farmed, walked and loved the Fen Country for more than 40 years: its levels and drains, its soaring churches and magnificent medieval buildings. In The Fens, he counterpoints the history of the Fenland landscape and its transformation with the story of his own discovery of it as an archaeologist.

For nearly a decade, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Justin Davidson has explained the ever-changing city of New York to his readers at New York magazine, introducing new buildings, interviewing architects, tracking the way the transforming urban landscape shapes who New Yorkers are. Now, his extensive, inspiring knowledge will be available to a wide audience.

The North Pole, originally published in 1910, makes available Robert E. Peary's own account of his expedition in the Arctic. It provides hotly contested evidence that remains an indispensable key in deciding who deserved the coveted title "Discoverer of the North Pole". It is also a gripping adventure story that is impossible to put down.

"What journey within our immediate world today would be remotely as interesting, enchanting, instructive and exciting as that to Russia? While our Europe, and especially the capitals, are subject to the inexorably contemporary process of mutual assimilation and resemblance, Russia remains utterly unparalleled." Stephen Zweig, 1928. After Stefan Zweig's bourgeois world collapsed with the First World War, he went searching for alternative forms of society, which culminated in a journey through the at that time still young Soviet Union.

The Nile, like all of Egypt, is both timeless and ever-changing. In this audio, renowned Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey downriver that is both history and travelogue. We begin at the First Nile Cataract, close to the modern city of Aswan. From there, Wilkinson guides us through the illustrious nation birthed by this great river.

Every year upon arriving in Plobien, the small Breton town where he spends his summers, American writer Mark Greenside picks back up where he left off with his faux-pas-filled Francophile life. Mellowed and humbled, but not daunted (OK, slightly daunted), he faces imminent concerns: What does he cook for a French person? Who has the right-of-way when entering or exiting a roundabout? Where does he pay for a parking ticket? And most dauntingly of all, when can he touch the tomatoes?

In 1842, Charles Dickens visited America. His reception was somewhat colder than that which usually greeted him - already a successful author in both Britain and the United States. This lack of enthusiasm from the Americans was partly due to his criticism of the pirating of English books in that country and partly due to his outspoken distaste for the custom of slavery in the southern states.

An improbable world beckons. We think we know Madagascar, but it's too big, too eccentric and too impenetrable to be truly understood. If it was stretched out across Europe, the islands would reach from London to Algiers, and yet its road network is barely bigger than tiny Jamaica's. There is no evidence of any human life until about 10,000 years ago, and, when eventually people settled, it was migrants from Borneo - 3,700 miles away - who came out on top.

I Wouldn't Start From Here is Andrew Mueller's personal memoir of the 21st century so far. It features any number of exotic locations, and a cast of revolutionaries, rock stars, politicians, hitmen, warmongers and peacemakers. Between ducking for cover in Gaza, running roadblocks in Iraq, getting arrested in Cameroon and hanging out with Hezbollah, this is a search for an answer to perhaps the key question of our time: "What is it with these people?"

In 2016, while working as a journalist in Yangon, Clare Hammond discovered an obscure map that showed a web of new railways spanning the length and breadth of the country - railways not shown on any other publicly available maps. She was determined to uncover the railways' origins, purpose, and most of all, the silence that surrounded them. She would spend three months travelling on these mysterious railways, and the next five years piecing their story together.