Who will care for the carers themselves?
Caroline Elton describes the problems of looking after her profoundly autistic brother, and admits to childhood feelings of fear, guilt and resentment
The adventures of the indomitable Dorothy Mills
The society rebel with a fondness for cross-dressing travelled widely in Africa, South America and the Middle East, dying in 1959, aged 70, with bags packed for the next expedition
The quest for the world’s highest peaks
Daniel Light’s colourful account of early mountaineering across the globe takes in imperial surveyors, sporting alpinists and the first man to attempt Everest
‘Now I have been made whole’: Lucy Sante’s experience of transition
Until the age of 66, Sante lived as a deeply divided man. In this story of self-realisation, she describes how transitioning finally ‘lifted the veil’ over her existence
Solo sisters
Gertrude Bell travelled extensively through Turkey before and after the first world war and the author plays dogged detective in her wake
Parallel lives
Aged 69, the travel writer had a stroke and spent his last 20 years as a hemiplegic – and writing this memoir of his father’s life intertwined with snapshots of his own
The man who knew everyone
The New York socialite devoted much of his time to saving wild life in Kenya – though a new biography ignores some of his less reputable views
Our understanding disability
This book reveals one man’s determination to enable his brother to live his best life. It is also a fable…
Centuries of myth-making
Every country has an origin story but nonehas ‘changed it so often’ as Russia, according to Orlando Figes. The subject…
A shared mission
The concept of vaccination evolved from 18th-century inoculation practices and many people contributed to the accretion of knowledge. This book…
An international civil war
Sara Wheeler describes the appalling brutality of the Russian Revolution and its far-reaching aftermath
To the back of beyond
What does home mean? Where your dead are buried, as Zulus believe? Or where you left your heart, as a…
Cold comfort
The story of the five women waiting at home for Captain Scott and his doomed polar party is naturally occluded…
From Holy Mother to Black Dragon
The Amur is the eighth or tenth longest river in the world, depending on whom you believe. The veteran travel…
Weaving stories
What are myths for? Do they lend meaning and value to this quintessence of dust? Like religion, perhaps they help…
So near and yet so strange
This pleasant volume, the author announces in the introduction, is ‘not a nature book, or even a travel book, so…
Journey to the unknown
Narratives of frozen beards in polar hinterlands never lose their appeal. Most of the good stories have been told, but…
Restless spirit
Sybille Bedford died in 2006, just short of 95. She left four novels, a travel book, two volumes of legal…
How to while away the winter
Competition is stiff among museums in Iceland. The Phallological Museum in Húsavík, devoted to the penis, stands tall in a…
Going round in circles
Some years ago I participated in a late-night Radio 3 show on exploration and travel. When I left the studio…
The exotic Silk Road is now a highway to hell
This engaging book describes the Norwegian author’s travels round the five Central Asian Stans — a region where toponyms still…
Whatever happened to glasnost and perestroika?
This is a timely book. It addresses the challenges of a fractious and fractured Europe. The first word of the…
Gales and Gaels — sailing solo from Cornwall to the Summer Isles
This is the story of a solo voyage in a 31ft- wooden sailing boat called Tsambika. Philip Marsden pilots his…
The unearthly powers of the North Pole
Having spent too much of my life at both poles (writing, not sledge-pulling), I know the spells those places cast.…
‘A triumph of meandering’
Sara Wheeler 27 November 2021 9:00 am
This is a book about George Orwell’s recognition that desire and joy can be forces of opposition to the authoritarian…