Sunday 6 February 2011

Sunday Armchair Travelling

It is Sunday afternoon and as is fast becoming a habit I have been enjoying tea and scones while reading another chapter of Susan Hill's book, Howards End is on the Landing. Despite the fact that she claims to neither be a traveller nor to be particularly interested in travel writing Hill has all the recent greats in her collection, Bruce Chatwin, Colin Thubron and Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Like Hill, I am no traveller. I not only like my own routine, I actually need it for my medical well-being and travelling not only exhausts me it also separates me from the secret of my much needed sleep, my own bed. So, if I want to know anything of foreign parts I am reliant on the work of others, be that though the auspices of the BBC or through writers of the calibre that Hill describes.

I know Chatwin better through his novels than through his travel books. On the Black Hill, is the story of twin brothers who, like me, are not travellers. They are Welsh farmers whose existence revolves round the land on which they were born and through charting their lives Chatwin also manages to evoke the life of the country itself.

Colin Thubron I once had the privilege of hearing speak and have never forgotten that calm and gentle man talking of the hazards of journeying through China at a time when the regime in power still made it difficult for a foreigner to spend even a couple of days there let alone any extended visit. I bought a copy of his book, Behind the Wall, and took it back to share with the children I was teaching who were as fascinated as only children can be by the man who kept a collection of noses in jars. Speculation as to what you might do with a nose collection kept the classroom buzzing for weeks.

But, Leigh Fermor, just the mention of his name brought back a feeling of shame. Hill speaks of his book, A Time to Keep Silence, as:

hardly a travel book at all - or if it is, the travel is inwards, a spiritual journey. Some books are balm to the soul and solace to the weary mind, a cooling stream at the end of long and tiring days and 'A Time to Keep Silence' is assuredly one of them.

Some years ago now, a dear friend offered me Leigh Fermor's books at a period when balm to the soul was much needed and I failed to take him up on his suggestion. I could walk upstairs now and put my hand straight onto the copy he gave me of A Time of Gifts, but I have never so much as opened it. Hill says that Leigh Fermor is the doyen of the travel world and I can neither contest or confirm that view - as yet. Has anyone else read his works? And, if so, what do you think? Should I start with the volume I already have or are there better ways in?

And are there other travel writers to explore? Not, please Bill Bryson, who always seems to be laughing at someone. But any other writers of the calibre of Chatwin, Thubron and Leigh Fermor would be welcome suggestions.


Annie

16 comments:

  1. I'm not a terribly good traveler, although I'd like to be. I'm always enticed by the idea of it, but then chicken out when it comes right down to leaving home for the great unknown.

    The Fermor book sounds quite nice, though. I could use some balm for my soul right about now.

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  2. Yes, Becca, you sound as though you've had a really rough week. Much of the Fermor book describes time he spent as a visitor in a monastery and it was the routine and calm that helped him so much. I like routine and calm.

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  3. I am also a homebody. Friends keep urging me to travel as I've never been to Europe and I feel I should someday, but I really do like to stay home. I like the book A Year in the World by Frances Mayes. She travels to many different areas of the world and writes fantastically well about the art in each of the places she visits.

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  4. Anbolyn, thanks for the recommendation. I'm off to Amazon to look it out now as it sounds exactly the sort of thing I would enjoy. I'm not that keen on discussions of scenery or politics but the art work would be very different.

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  5. I wonder if its because you live somewhere interesting to start with. Perth is beautiful and sunny, but it is isolated. From the day you learn to read, you are always reading about somewhere else. It is never clearer than at Christmas, when we swelter in 40 degree heat while surrounding ourselves with images of snowmen and pine trees. Whenever I travel I feel like I am visiting the world I have been reading about all my life.

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  6. That's a good thought, Karyn. One thing about the UK is that it is relatively easy to travel around if you want to. Have you read any of Helene Hanff's books (she of '84 Charing Cross Road'). She always said the same thing of coming to England; that she knew the places she visited from the books she had read. I hadn't realised you were in Perth. We heard on the news this morning about the fires. I hope you're not anywhere near them. Do keep safe.

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  7. I have read 84 Charing Cross Road; I loved both it and the movie, and it was one of the first locations I went to when I first visited London many years ago. I live on a semi-rural property on the outskirts of Perth and so the risk of bushfire is ever-present in summer. Those fires were not near us, but I know someone who lost their house yesterday. It has been an unusual summer here in Australia; we've never known so many floods, fires and cyclones.

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  8. Thank you for letting me know that you're safe, Karyn. We have had a very hard, for us, winter, this year, with great damage done by snow and, this last weekend, floods but what Australia has been through puts all that into perspective. I am so sorry for your friend. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to lose everything.

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  9. I do like to travel ... and I rather like travel books, but don't read many of them.

    This one is not a travel writer but has written a wonderful travel book - it's The place where souls are born, by Thomas Keneally, and is in a series called Destinations. I like this book because of its description of place and its commentary. This one is about the American southwest.

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  10. Jenny Diski's _On Trying to Keep Still_ is a wonderful collection of her travel writing (but she does not want to call it that, so there is the interesting twist of genre-bending). _Stranger on a Train_ was also good, but there is a lot of smoking, and I have never smoked, so I felt a bit more distanced from her expereinces in that one.

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  11. WG I've read quite a lot of Keneally's fiction and I enjoy his style, so this is certainly one that I should look out, especially as it's concerned with an area I know nothing about.

    Nathalie, Diski is a writer I have been promising myself I would read for sometime and this seems like a very good reason to do something about it. On the matter of smoking, I know what you mean. One of my favourite detectives smokes and I find it very hard to deal with. She ought to know better! (How's that for being judgemental?)

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  12. Danielle at A Work in Progress has been reading Patrick Leigh Fermor. She's the first I had heard about him from and he is now on my tbr list. I've not read much in the way of travel writing. Alain de Botton has a wonderful book though called The Art of Travel.

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  13. Oh, Jenny Diski, definitely! Have you read Rory Stewart's The Places in Between? That one is quite good.

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  14. Stafanie, de Botton is an author I hadn't thought of in this genre, but he is a very good writer and I've enjoyed some of his other books. I'll look this one out. Thanks.

    Dorothy, No, Stewart is a new name. Where is he writing about?

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  15. I came across a Nancy Pearl book on travel writing: Book Lust on the Go. It would be a good place to "browse."

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  16. Nathalie, thank you for thinking of me. This is the second time Nancy Pear's name has come up recently and I've never read anything by her. I'm going to explore now.

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