Travel books to inspire your wanderlust

Using books to satisfy my travel itch when I haven’t been able to get away has been vital to my mental health over the years. Working in the travel sector is hard; the hours are long, we work hard, and the stress is high. In an industry where geo-politics and global economies can have massive impacts on your business and workload, taking a moment to escape is essential. Just try and stop me from yapping about all my favourite travel books that have inspired my travels over the years!

ANNE OF GREEN GABLES – L.M. MONTGOMERY

The story of spirited Anne Shirley grabbed me from a young age when my grandmother gifted me a copy for my tenth birthday. Anne became my idol; I’ve often made decisions on a What Would Anne Do whim. Anne taught me to follow my dreams and to walk through life with kindness and compassion. She taught me to be curious about the world, and that I could do anything I put my mind to. She taught me that hard work and dedication pays off, and most importantly she showed me what it was like to live and love with your entire heart. So of course, visiting Green Gables in Prince Edward Island was a lifelong dream, and last year I got to do it!

WORLD TRAVEL – ANTHONY BOURDAIN

I’m always searching for a little bit more of Tony, who has been my strongest inspiration of travel and trying new things since I was watching re-runs of No Reservations and Parts Unknown in my early 20s. Tony was always up for anything, putting everything in his mouth and getting under the skin of a destination through the food he experienced. World Travel has been a source of comfort and inspiration since publication, and while Tony hasn’t written a lot of the words within this one his essence is here. There are wonderful essays by friends and culinary colleagues, and the final result is a beautiful tribute to a man who remained curious about the world until the end.

THE VALLEY OF THE ASSASSINS – FREYA STARK

The late Freya Stark’s treks into the wilderness of western Iran in the 1920s came at a time when there were few female travel writers, much less anyone trekking into the Middle East. This new edition of her first published book shines with her trademark wit.

AN AFRICAN HISTORY OF AFRICA – ZEINAB BADAWI

I’m always a fan of revisionist histories, especially those that seek to retell stories from the perspective of colonised peoples. In this truth-telling, Zeinab Badawi visits more than 30 countries, speaking to experts and storytellers, to unearth not just the larger narrative of the continent, but the smaller stories that shaped local experience. It is a task as enormous as Africa itself, yet achieved with breathtaking brevity and laser-eyed focus.

BURIAL RITES – HANNAH KENT

Kent is an Australian novelist, and her debut novel, Burial Rites, is an astonishing success. Based on the true story of the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland, this book has such a sense of place that you’ll be instantly transported to the windy tundra. Agnes Magnúsdóttir was a servant in northern Iceland who was condemned to death after the murder of two men, one of whom was her employer, and became the last woman put to death in Iceland in 1830. This fictionalisation of her story gives her back some agency, poking at the why of her circumstances in ways that will make readers uncomfortable and face our own complicity.

FLÂNEUSE – LAUREN ELKIN

To flânuer, or to walk, is a past time historically enjoyed by men. A way for them to explore their cities, wandering and noticing. It is a past time not so much enjoyed by women, where we are constantly dodging unwanted gazes, questions and harassments. Flâneuse demands women take back the streets, tracing the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and take the reader on a sojourn through Paris, Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities. If this doesn’t inspire you to get out and wander your own city, I’m not sure what will!

TO THE RIVER – OLIVIA LAING

I read this during a visit back to York, at a time when the River Ouse was flooding and half the city was unwalkable due to the rising water. For those who don’t know, the Ouse is the river in which Virginia Woolf drowned in 1941. In To the River, Olivia Laing walks the river from source to sea, and in doing so she excavates all sorts of stories from the marshy banks. The brutal Barons’ War of the thirteenth century to the ‘Dinosaur Hunters’, the nineteenth-century amateur naturalists who first cracked the fossil code – they’re all here. Central among these ghosts is, of course, Virginia Woolf herself: her life, her writing and her watery death.

TALES OF A FEMALE NOMAD – RITE GOLDEN GELMAN

Rita Golden Gelman lives a privileged life, but something’s missing. Amid the glamorous parties and dining with celebrities, life was missing. Her marriage falters, and Gleman seizes the opportunity to live her dream. From her first tentative trip to Mexico, to the Galapagos Islands where she becomes a tour guide, living in a royal palace in Balik, a fishing trip in churning seas in Thailand, to New Zealand where she ‘adopts’ a school full of children and onwards to destinations unknown. Without a plan and on a shoestring budget, Rita shares the joys of her transformation from an unfulfilled suburbanite to an adventurous female nomad.

A FORTUNE-TELLER TOLD ME – TITZIANO TERZANI

When a Hong Kong fortune-teller warned Tiziano Terzani that he should avoid plane flights in 1993, he decided to take the old man’s advice. He took to travelling by rail, road and sea. Consulting fortune-tellers and shamans wherever he went, he learnt to understand and respect older ways of life and beliefs now threatened by the crasser forms of Western modernity. This is an utterly charming travel memoir, that reconnects the reader with slowing down and deep observation.

ME, MYSELF & LORD BYRON – JULIETTA JAMES

Lord Byron was not just one of England’s finest poets, he was also history’s first true rock star, living a life of abundant extravagance and shocking scandal that led eventually to self-imposed exile in Europe. Through his travels, Byron carved out a new life, remaining true to himself to the end. So when journalist Julietta Jameson is compelled by emotional crisis to embark on her own period of personal exile, whose footsteps better to follow in than those of her beloved Byron? Me, Myself and Lord Byron is a story of parallel journeys, insecurities, fears and regrets. Against the sumptuous backdrop of Switzerland, Italy and Greece, the reader is reminded that it’s never too late to rediscover yourself.