Founded in 1974, Bradt Guides is now the largest independently-owned guidebook publisher in both the US and UK. We have over 200 titles in print, with a particular focus on lesser-known places overlooked by other travel publishers. We also publish a series of Slow Travel guides to UK regions and a list of travel narratives. There are 15 people in the Bradt team, based (when Covid allows) in an office above a coffee shop in Chesham, Bucks. The following books are very different but all connected to travel in fun ways. The books were selected by Simon Willmore, Claire Strange, Iona Brokenshire, Deborah Gerrard, and Hugh Brune.
Bradt Travel Guides
The world’s leading independent travel publisher
Bradt Guides will soon be launching new editions of acclaimed guides to Iraq, Iceland, Mauritius, and Barbados. Something for every travel taste! There are also two new travel narratives: Galapagos Crusoes by June Wilson, an account of a year spent watching birds on a remote island in the 1960s, and My Family and Other Enemies by Mary Novakovich, a part-travelogue, part-memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia.
For serious travellers, we’ll continue to develop our Travel Club, offering a monthly magazine with travel tips and features, monthly online talks, discounts from a range of travel partners, and all Bradt guides at half price. (Or even free at the higher membership tiers!)
In A Year in the Merde, Stephen Clarke walks the line perfectly between berating the country he's in and making it clear he is, in truth, really enjoying himself. When I discovered the book, I (a Brit) was living in Grenoble in France so it was particularly relevant. At the time, I was desperately trying to complete my Masters - in engineering! - but Clarke's book opened my eyes to a world where you can earn a living by documenting your travel experiences.
Within six months, I had completed my Masters (by the skin of my teeth), turned my back on engineering, and enrolled in a post-graduate course in journalism. 11 years later, I've worked on books of my own, including guides to Malaysia, India, Spain, and France - returning to Grenoble, the place where it all began.
Paul West, a young Englishman arriving in Paris to start a new job, is about to find out. _________________
They do eat a lot of cheese, some of which smells like pigs' droppings.
They don't wash their armpits with garlic soap.
Going on strike really is the second national participation sport after petanque.
And, yes, they do use suppositories.
Less quaint than A Year in Provence, less chocolatey than Chocolat, A Year in the Merde will tell you how to get served by the grumpiest Parisian waiter; how to make perfect vinaigrette every time;…
Back in the early ‘90s in Melbourne, I talked my way into a temporary job typesetting Explore Australia, a mammoth full-colour guidebook. I ended up staying several years, undertaking desk-based research, managing the photo library, and editing text and maps. I spent my days poring over cartographic proofs, sifting through glorious photos of rust-red mountain ranges, cobalt-blue skies, and dense tropical rainforest abutting white-sand beaches. I spoke to those manning the tourist information offices around the country: at Coral Bay, where the Ningaloo Reef is just a metre from the beach, at Healesville, when the cackle of a kookaburra interrupted my call, and at Cossack, a gold-rush-era ghost town with a population of one man and one dog. Some years later I sold my home, bought a 4x4, and set off to see all those places that I had visited vicariously…
The world was panicking about the unknown effects of a calendar rolling over from 1999 to a new century, when all electrical capabilities could disintegrate, plunging us into digital darkness. Immune to the Y2K bug, I headed to Nevada, determined to experience my own Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. The Raoul Duke to my Dr. Gonzo, was a bad-ass drummer: part Native American, part black American, 100% goth and rocking a lime-green mohawk. We stumbled through the casinos with their vibrant décor - swirling carpets that seemed determined to trip us up – and out into the cool night…
'We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. I remember saying something like, "I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive ..."'
Hunter S. Thompson is roaring down the desert highway to Las Vegas with his attorney, the Samoan, to find the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, the duo engage in a surreal succession of chemically enhanced confrontations with casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans.
This stylish reissue of Hunter S. Thompson's iconic masterpiece, a controversial bestseller when…
I’d been working at Bradt Guides for about three years when we commissioned Polly Evans to write the first edition of Northern Lights: A practical travel guide, and I’ve been fascinated by this natural phenomenon ever since. Fast forward five years and I finally booked a dream trip to Swedish Lapland in celebration of a milestone birthday, armed with the 2nd edition containing all the information needed to have the most incredible few days. It snowed a lot whilst we were there creating a stunning winter wonderland, and although the Aurora Borealis didn’t make an appearance we packed in so many other adventures that made it memorable for all.
An updated third edition of Bradt's practical guide to the best places to view the Northern Lights, the only guidebook that caters to the large number of people whose dream is to see the aurora borealis. Included is information on everything from how to photograph the aurora to what to wear, and how to understand northern lights forecasting, as well as the science behind the aurora and the auroral oval. Also detailed are the best locations from which the aurora can be viewed, covering, in Europe, Scandinavia, Lapland, Iceland and Greenland, and in North America, Canada and Alaska. In addition,…
I was forced to read this at school, but it immediately made me want to visit Barcelona. I first went when I was 19 and have been back several times subsequently, re-reading the book on each visit. Part travel narrative, part history, part polemic, part love story, part gripping adventure yarn – you get something different out of Homage to Catalonia each time you read it. Here is Orwell on the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona’s great landmark, still unfinished 85 years later and now the city’s principal tourist attraction: “A modern cathedral, and one of the most hideous buildings in the world. It has four crenellated spires exactly the shape of hock bottles. Unlike most of the churches in Barcelona it was not damaged during the revolution – it was spared because of its ‘artistic value’, people said. I think the Anarchists showed bad taste in not blowing it up when they had the chance.”
Homage to Catalonia remains one of the most famous accounts of the Spanish Civil War. With characteristic scrutiny, Orwell questions the actions and motives of all sides whilst retaining his firm beliefs in human courage and the need for radical social change.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Helen Graham, a leading historian on the Spanish Civil War.
Bradt Guides will soon be launching new editions of acclaimed guides to Iraq, Iceland, Mauritius, and Barbados. Something for every travel taste! There are also two new travel narratives: Galapagos Crusoes by June Wilson, an account of a year spent watching birds on a remote island in the 1960s, and My Family and Other Enemies by Mary Novakovich, a part-travelogue, part-memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia.
For serious travellers, we’ll continue to develop our Travel Club, offering a monthly magazine with travel tips and features, monthly online talks, discounts from a range of travel partners, and all Bradt guides at half price. (Or even free at the higher membership tiers!)
I come by my interest in history and the years before, during, and after the Second World War honestly. For one thing, both my father and my father-in-law served as pilots in the war, my father a P-38 pilot in North Africa and my father-in-law a B-17 bomber pilot in England. Their histories connect me with a period I think we can still almost reach with our fingertips and one that has had a momentous impact on our lives today. I have taken that interest and passion to discover and write true life stories of the war—focusing on the untold and unheard stories often of the “Average Joe.”
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on any other single day of the war.
The narrative of No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident while focusing its attention on ordinary individuals—clerks, radio operators, cooks, sailors, machinist mates, riflemen, and pilots and their air crews. All were men who chose to serve their country and soon found themselves in a terrifying and otherworldly place.
No Average Day reveals the vastness of the war as it reaches past the beaches in…
October 24, 1944, is not a day of national remembrance. Yet, more Americans serving in World War II perished on that day than on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, or on June 6, 1944, when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, or on any other single day of the war. In its telling of the events of October 24, No Average Day proceeds hour by hour and incident by incident. The book begins with Army Private First-Class Paul Miller's pre-dawn demise in the Sendai #6B Japanese prisoner of war camp. It concludes with the death…
