• The best books on Local Adventures - The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature by David George Haskell
  • The best books on Local Adventures - The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe by Chet Raymo
  • The best books on Local Adventures - On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz
  • The best books on Local Adventures - Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
  • The best books on Local Adventures - The Backyard Adventurer by Beau Miles

The best books on Local Adventures, recommended by Alastair Humphreys

Wonderful as it would be to climb Mount Everest or row across the Atlantic, not all of us will get the chance to go on an epic adventure. But that doesn’t mean we can’t go exploring. Alastair Humphreys, the British adventurer, explains the concept of ‘local adventure’ and recommends books that give a feel for what it’s about and why it’s worth pursuing.

  • The Best Travel Books of 2023: The Stanford Travel Writing Awards - In The Shadow of the Mountain by Silvia Vasquez-Lavado
  • The Best Travel Books of 2023: The Stanford Travel Writing Awards - High: A Journey Across the Himalaya, Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal, and China by Erika Fatland, translated by Kari Dickson
  • The Best Travel Books of 2023: The Stanford Travel Writing Awards - Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia by Shafik Meghji
  • The Best Travel Books of 2023: The Stanford Travel Writing Awards - The Slow Road to Tehran: A Revelatory Bike Ride through Europe and the Middle East by Rebecca Lowe
  • The Best Travel Books of 2023: The Stanford Travel Writing Awards - The Po: An Elegy for Italy's Longest River by Tobias Jones

The Best Travel Books of 2023: The Stanford Travel Writing Awards, recommended by Cal Flyn

Every year, Stanfords, the best travel bookshop in the world (in our view), sponsors the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards, with travel writers and journalists judging the best travel book in a number of categories. Here Cal Flyn, our deputy editor, takes us through the eight books shortlisted for the 2023 ‘Travel Book of the Year’ award, taking us from Bolivia to Singapore via Europe, the Middle East and the top of Mt. Everest.

  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - Mountain Gloom And Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite by Marjorie Hope Nicolson
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - Letters written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - Walden by Henry David Thoreau
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
  • The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel - How to Talk About Places You've Never Been: On the Importance of Armchair Travel by Michele Hutchison (translator) & Pierre Bayard

The Best Books on the Philosophy of Travel, recommended by Emily Thomas

At its best, travel broadens our minds, expands our horizons and allows us to see the world we live in differently. But it has also played an important role in the history of philosophy. Emily Thomas, author of The Meaning of Travel: Philosophers Abroad, explores the connections between her two passions—philosophy and travel—at a moment when most of us are unable to leave our houses: perhaps the perfect moment to reflect on travel’s significance for human beings.

  • The Best Hiking Memoirs - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
  • The Best Hiking Memoirs - A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
  • The Best Hiking Memoirs - The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
  • The Best Hiking Memoirs - The Rings of Saturn by W.G Sebald
  • The Best Hiking Memoirs - The Salt Path: A Memoir by Raynor Winn

The Best Hiking Memoirs, recommended by Gail Simmons

Accounts of journeys on foot capture the imagination; partly this is a function of the satisfaction of following a linear journey from start to finish, and partly it is a quality inherent to walking itself—a freeing of the mind. Gail Simmons, who follows an old English pilgrimage route in her book Between the Chalk and the Sea, selects five hiking memoirs that celebrate the liberation that comes from putting one foot after another.