SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS 2024'As epic as it is engaging' Tom Holland'Jaunty, highly informative and ultimately sobering' New York Review of Books'A fine book... Leon McCarron's tough journey paints a rich and enthralling portrait' Sir Michael PalinThe river Tigris is in danger. It has been the lifeblood of a...

‘It seemed a terrible shame to meet my end in Iowa; I couldn’t imagine anywhere more disappointing to die. If I were a betting man I’d have reckoned on the most dangerous thing in this state being sheer boredom. The scenery hadn’t changed for weeks and I was slowly dissolving into stimulation-deprived madness. My current predicament, then – attempting to escape through cornfields from a gun-toting alcohol-soaked rancher – was not something I expected.’Just months after graduating fr...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARDS 2024'As epic as it is engaging' Tom Holland'Jaunty, highly informative and ultimately sobering' New York Review of Books'A fine book... Leon McCarron's tough journey paints a rich and enthralling portrait' Sir Michael PalinThe river Tigris is in danger. It has been the lifeblood of a...

A compendium of fascinating and evocative new writing on railway travel and history. Telling of little known journeys and uncovered histories on railway routes around the world - from the UK, Europe and Africa to North America, the Middle East and Asia.From Myanmar's highlands to the British Pennines, from slow travel between coffee plantations in Borneo to a cross-continent odyssey on African railways, from the pioneers of the American West to European trains in war, this is a new...

A compendium of fascinating and evocative new writing on railway travel and history. Telling of little known journeys and uncovered histories on railway routes around the world - from the UK, Europe and Africa to North America, the Middle East and Asia.From Myanmar's highlands to the British Pennines, from slow travel between coffee plantations in Borneo to a cross-continent odyssey on African railways, from the pioneers of the American West to European trains in war, this is a new...

An unforgettable journey through the Middle East that follows the history of the miraculous and promise-filled Hejaz Railway.Just over a century ago, it was possible to leave Damascus by train and head south, into the desert, towards the holy city of Medina. The laying of 800 miles of track at the dawn of the twentieth century offered a political and military lifeline for the ailing Ottoman Empire, and revolutionized the Hajj pilgrimage from a forty-day overland or...