Showing results by publisher "Penguin Audio" in Travel Writing & Commentary

A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln and fuse into porcelain - translucent, luminous, white. Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain.

Remember when you were a kid, and you used to go round to a friend's house to see if they were playing? Well, as adults we're not supposed to do that. Which is a shame... because Dave Gorman likes playing. He REALLY likes games. So he knocked on the biggest door you could ever imagine - the internet - and asked 76,000 people if they fancied a game. This is the story of what happened next.

In March 2022, Michael Palin travelled the length of the River Tigris through Iraq to get a sense of what life is like in a region of the world that once formed the cradle of civilisation, but that in recent times has witnessed turmoil and appalling bloodshed. It was a journey of sharp, often brutal contrasts. At one moment he would be exploring the old streets of Baghdad or the ancient ruins of Babylon. At the next he would be visiting the war-torn city of Mosul, or learning about the horrific Speicher massacre in Tikrit.

In the autumn of 1936, some 200 men from the Tyneside town of Jarrow marched 300 miles to London in protest against the destruction of their towns and industries. Precisely 80 years on, Stuart Maconie walks from north to south, retracing the route of the emblematic Jarrow Crusade. Following history's footsteps, Maconie is in search of what modern Britain is really like today.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed west face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into base camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead.

For many years a farmer in England, John Lewis-Stempel yearned once again to live in a landscape where turtle doves purr and nightingales sing, as they did almost everywhere in his childhood. He wanted to be self-sufficient, to make his own wine and learn the secrets of truffle farming. And so, buying an old honey-coloured limestone house with bright blue shutters, the Lewis-Stempels began their new life as peasant farmers.

Have you ever made a drunken bet? Worse, still, have you ever tried to win one? In attempting to hitchhike round Ireland with a fridge, Tony Hawks did both, and his foolhardiness led him to one of the best experiences of his life. Joined by his trusty travelling companion-cum-domestic appliance, he found himself in the midst of a remarkable adventure, at times emotional, at times inspirational, but more often than not, downright silly.

Brought to you by Penguin. In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political comeback in 1978; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'.

A few years it became possible, for this first time, for a foreigner to travel Siberia almost at will. This is the account of Thubron's 15, 000-mile journey through this astonishing country - one twelfth of the land surface of the whole earth.

Bob Geldof first visited Africa in 1984. The following year, Live Aid inspired a generation to raise millions for the starving in Africa.

Over 20 years on, passion undiminished, Geldof returns to what he calls the Luminous Continent. This is his personal diary. Unflinchingly honest, Geldof in Africa paints a unique picture of this extraordinary and beautiful land.

Over several seasons, Kassabova spends time with the people of this magical region. She meets women and men who work in a long lineage of foragers, healers and mystics. She learns about wild plants and the ancient practice of herbalism, and experiences a symbiotic system where nature and culture have blended for thousands of years. Through her captivating encounters we come to feel the devastating weight of the ecological and cultural disinheritance that the people of this valley have suffered. Yet, in her search for elixir, she also finds reasons for hope.

As a commercial airline pilot, Mark has spent nearly two decades crossing the skies of our planet, touching down in the cities he imagined as a child. He experiences our metropolises in short layover visits that repeat over weeks, months or even years, giving him a unique perspective on the urbanisation of the world. In this intimate yet expansive work that weaves travelogue with memoir, Mark celebrates the cities he has come to know and love, through the lens of the hometown his heart has never left.

Danny Wallace, million-copy bestselling author of Yes Man and Join Me, has fallen down the modern rabbit hole of lies, conspiracies and disinformation. Along the way, he encounters families torn apart by accusations and fake news, journalists putting themselves on the frontline of the disinformation war, reformed conspiracy theorists, influencers who see profit in stoking paranoia, and the shadowy nameless, faceless trolls on the other side of our screens.

Immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of the railway as the world's most famous trainspotter and TikTok sensation takes you on an epic journey and shows you the joy of following your own passions. Sharing his love for trains, Francis takes us along on his most memorable trainspotting adventures. Traversing the fields and footbridges of the British countryside, passing through grandiose ticket halls, historic terminals and backwater stations, we chase locomotive perfection. Along the way we come to appreciate the majesty of trains and the true pleasure of trainspotting.

An immersive journey through the culture and cuisine of one Japanese town, its forest, and its watershed - where ducks are hunted by net, saké is brewed from the purest mountain water, and charcoal is fired in stone kilns - by an American writer and food stylist who spent years working alongside artisans.

Ross Kemp's fascinating guide to the worst places in the world. Want to know where to discover the perfect sunset in Fiji? How about a tropical paradise in St Lucia or one of the world’s beautiful natural wonders in the Alps? Well this is NOT the book for you. But if you want to know about meeting transvestite prostitutes in a South African prison or being attacked for a can of tuna in the Congo, buying crack cocaine in a Venezuelan prison or being chased by dogs in a haunted house in Belize, then look no further.

Oliver Mol was a successful, clever, healthy twenty-five-year old. Then one day the migraine started. For ten months, the pain was constant, exacerbated by writing, reading, using computers, looking at phones or anything with a screen. Slowly he became a writer who no longer wrote, and a person who could no longer could communicate with the modern world. In literature, and life, Oliver began to disappear. His doctors can't figure out how to fix him. He suffers a breakdown. One evening, high on pain killers, Oliver Googles the only thing he can think of.

If someone called you a "googlewhack", what would you do? Would you end up playing table tennis with a nine year-old boy in Boston? Would you find yourself in Los Angeles wrangling snakes, or would you go to China to be licked by a performance artist? If your name is Dave Gorman, then all of these things could be true.

A Northerner in exile, Stuart Maconie goes on a journey in search of the North, attempting to discover where the clichés end and the truth begins. He travels from Wigan Pier to Blackpool Tower and Newcastle's Bigg Market to the Lake District to find his own Northern Soul, encountering along the way an exotic cast of chippy Scousers, pie-eating woollybacks, topless Geordies, mad-for-it Mancs, Yorkshire nationalists and brothers in southern exile.

With superb skill and feeling, Graham Greene retraces the experiences and encounters of his extraordinary life. His restlessness is legendary; as if seeking out danger, Greene travelled to Haiti during the nightmare rule of Papa Doc, Vietnam in the last days of the French, Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion. With ironic delight he recalls his time in the British Secret Service in Africa and his brief involvement in Hollywood. He writes, as only he can, about people and places, faith, doubt, fear and not least, the trials and craft of writing.