Books in the Armchair Traveller series

In three short weeks the author experienced a tradition dating back over one thousand years This is his account, personal yet enlightening, for the interested non-Muslims who remain barred from the holy sites of Islam

When the author, a former foreign correspondent, bought a house in Umbria, she knew that buying her dream home did not mean that life would become a dream. This book describes the journey of making Umbria her home.

Woodsworth lovingly recounts vivid details of life in Provence, providing a welcome antidote to the typical rose-tinted, romantic view of the a perennially sunny destination for tourists.

Puglia is the heel stretching down from the spur of the Italian boot. It boasts beautiful landscapes, Romanesque cathedrals, Gothic castles and a wealth of Baroque architecture. This introduction to Apulian history is the first comprehensive historical survey of the region in English and provides an enlightening, readable overview of the region.

This book is an exhilarating journey through Turkey s history and a perceptive look at the interactions between secularism, religion, and multi ethnicity.

A traveller's history of Istanbul from the ancient time to nowadays Turkey. An account of city's great buildings, delicious food and vibrant life.

Follows every step of Robert Louis Stevenson's last years, studying every clue left behind by the Scottish writer and reaching his own conclusion about the most dramatic turn in Stevenson's life: his decision to settle in Samoa, where the climate was poison for his already diseased lungs.

Not even the English are keen to explain what England actually is. Holger Ehling takes us on a journey to iconic places, from London to Jarrow, from Stonehenge to the Eden Project, from Shakespeare's Globe to the marvels of Blackpool, pondering along the way about what it is that makes these places so quintessentially English.

Did you know Chinese don't eat soup, they drink it? That their surnames come before their first names? That their good sense is to be found not in their heads but in their hearts? Or that white is their colour of mourning? This title provides a guide to China's sociable and friendly people and their complex and often contradictory society.

A knowledgeable, loving and poetic account of a journey across his country by one of Sweden's most renowned and revered writers. Gustafsson paints an evocative portrait of his homeland.

Gives a description of the individual steps of the "Odyssey", starting in troy and finishing in Ithaca. This title includes the countries of Turkey, Tunisia, Malta, Italy and of course Greece.

Jerusalem is not an ordinary city. This book is both a portrait of a spiritual Jerusalem, and a recounting of the effect the city has on the spirit of one visitor who discovers its ongoing distress and, though sceptical of religion, he discovers some sort of spirituality in himself.

November 1925: In search of health and sun, the writer D. H. Lawrence arrives on the Italian Riviera with his wife, Frieda, and is exhilarated by the view of the sparkling Mediterranean from his rented villa, set amid olives and vines. But over the next six months, Frieda will be fatally attracted to their landlord, a dashing Italian army officer. This incident of infidelity influenced Lawrence to write two short stories, "Sun" and "The Virgin and the Gypsy," in which women are drawn to earthy, muscular men, both of which prefigured his scandalous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. In DH Lawrence in Italy, Owen reconstructs the drama leading up to the creation of one of the most controversial novels of all time by drawing on the unpublished letters and diaries of Rina Secker, the Anglo-Italian wife of Lawrence's publisher. In addition to telling the story of the origins of Lady Chatterley, DH Lawrence in Italy explores Lawrence's passion for all things Italian, tracking his path to the Riviera from Lake Garda to Lerici, Abruzzo, Capri, Sicily, and Sardinia.