The gambler and the hooker: Awful Beauty, by Andrei Navrozov, reviewed
This book — the title is from Pasternak —is billed as ‘literary fiction’. The narrator, a Russian gambler and drinker…
Staggering to Jerusalem — a journey from darkness into light
Guy Stagg walked 5,500 km from Canterbury to Jerusalem, following medieval pilgrim paths, and he records the expedition in The…
Was there ever anything romantic about the Romany life?
Damian Le Bas is of Gypsy stock (he insists on the upper case throughout his book). His beloved great-grandmother told…
Doris Lessing: from champion of free love to frump with a bun
‘I am interested only in stretching myself, in living as fully as I can.’ Lara Feigel begins her thoughtful book…
What makes a semi-police state happy?
This charming collection of individual photographic portraits of Bhutanese citizens intentionally highlights the two central features of the kingdom today:…
Horatio Clare breaks the ice with the taciturn Finns
In this slim travel book Horatio Clare voyages as a guest on the Finnish icebreaker Otso (Bear), ‘mostly in darkness,…
The greatest survival story
This is the story of a 16th-century Portuguese knight and mariner who survived alone on a lump of volcanic rock…
The curse of the Yeti
This book, according to its author Gabi Martínez, is ‘a non-fiction novel’. It tells the story of Jordi Magraner, a…
Up where the air is clear
Robert Twigger’s father was born in a Himalayan hill resort and carried to school in a sedan chair. His son,…
Alone on a wide, wide sea
Some years ago, when I stepped from an unstable boat onto Juan Fernández island, a friendly man took my bag…
Northern lights
‘The only use of a gentleman in travelling,’ Emmeline Lowe wrote in 1857, ‘is to take care of the luggage.’…
Frozen beards and hot tempers
Born in New South Wales in 1888, George Finch climbed Mount Canobolas as a boy, unleashing, in the thin air,…
The writing on the wall
‘Every day’, writes the foreign correspondent Wendell Steavenson in this account of the 2011 Egyptian revolution, ‘see-sawed between joy and…
Lost horizon
Sikkim was a Himalayan kingdom a third of the size of Wales squeezed between China, India, Nepal and Bhutan. I…
Into the blue
Jenny Balfour Paul is an indigo dye expert. She has written two books on the subject, and lectures around the…
The lure of fool’s gold
In 2008, the price of gold lofted above $1,000 an ounce for the first time in history, inspiring a rush…
Gordon Bennett, what a disaster!
In the course of the 19th century, various flotillas of expeditions hastened to the polar regions in little wooden ships…
