Travel Europe History

No one knows a city like the people who live there - so who better to relate the history of Paris than its inhabitants through the ages? Taking us from 1750 to the new millennium, Graham Robb's Parisians is at once an audiobook to lose yourself in, to dip in and out of at leisure, and to return to again and again - rather like the city itself, in fact.

Geoffrey Fletcher's London was not the big landmarks, but rather 'the tawdry, extravagant and eccentric'. He wrote about parts of the city no-one ever had before. This could be an art nouveau pub, a Victorian music hall, a Hawksmoor church or even a public toilet in Holborn in which the attendant kept goldfish in the cisterns. He was drawn to the corners of the city where 'the kids swarm like ants and there are dogs everywhere'.

Zu Fuß zum Meer, die Feder im Gepäck. Eine der erstaunlichsten Reisen unserer Zeit! An einem verregneten Dezembertag macht sich der 18-jährige Patrick Leigh Fermor zu Fuß, quer durch Europa, nach Konstantinopel auf. In dem Jahr, in dem Hitler an die Macht kommt, wandert der vielseitig interessierte junge Mann durch Wiesen und Wälder, verschneite Städte und die Salons der guten Gesellschaft. Er macht Bekanntschaft mit Handwerkern, Arbeitern und Direktoren, er nächtigt in ärmlichen Hospizen, Scheunen und auf märchenhaften Schlössern.

A history of walking and our relationship with the British countryside. On the afternoon of Sunday April 24, 1932, a group of approximately five hundred men and women set out for the summit of Kinder Scout, the highest point in Derbyshire's Peak District. They were not here to take in the fresh air and breath-taking vistas: they were here to make a stand. Kinder Scout, like almost every other site of natural beauty in Britain at that time, was privately owned and fiercely guarded.

In Sicily: Land of Love and Strife, the process of capturing the island nation on film is revealed. Mark Spano invites the listener to follow him on his journey to celebrate the real Sicily, and to change the public perception of his family's homeland.

In My Scotland, number one best-selling author Val McDermid takes readers to the landscapes she has known all her life and the places where her stories and characters reside. This remarkable book uncovers Val's own Scotland in all its glory - from the iconic Isle of Skye to the majestic streets of Edinburgh, from the undiscovered hideaways of the Highlands to the wild and untamed Jura. Featuring excerpts from Val McDermid's best-selling novels and charting Karen Pirie's Fife to Lindsay Gordon's Glasgow, My Scotland is an unforgettable and uniquely personal journey.

Yorkshire. The biggest and best county in England. So much tradition and history. So many things to see and do. A good number of which you may not be familiar with. So let's put that right shall we? Please allow me, a natural born Yorkshireman, to show you why my home county is such a great place by introducing you to my personal selection of Yorkshire greatness including language, tradition, scenery, food culture, industry, and plenty more.

Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by castles. Their history, the part they have played in the development of history through the centuries, the magnificent architecture and feats of ancient engineering and construction. Not only that, castles are great places to visit for a day trip to learn more about them and see the spectacle.

In the autumn of 1936, some 200 men from the Tyneside town of Jarrow marched 300 miles to London in protest against the destruction of their towns and industries. Precisely 80 years on, Stuart Maconie walks from north to south, retracing the route of the emblematic Jarrow Crusade. Following history's footsteps, Maconie is in search of what modern Britain is really like today.

“Soviet space program Interkosmos, the Iron Curtain, General Hermaszewski, and a frenzied race between world powers” - a fascinating reportage which unveils the circumstances of the Polish flight into space in June 1978. An excellent story telling that heroism cannot be planned, it can only happen on its own.

À la fin du XVIIIe siècle ils étaient trois à rêver, avec leur œuvre, d’atteindre les sommets, d'atteindre le firmament : Mozart et sa « Petite musique de nuit », les frères Montgolfier et leur ballon. Hélas la petite sonate ne fut jouée qu’après la mort de l’auteur, et c’est Pilâtre de Rozier qui s’envola à la place des deux frères!

Ci troveremo a passeggiare nella Parigi del Seicento, accompagnati da guide d'eccezione, “persone di mondo” colte ma non dotte, educate a conversare in società con straordinaria naturalezza, garbo e finezza. Leggerle è quasi come ascoltarle, perché sapevano mettere sulla carta il loro parlato senza appannarlo, dentro memorie, lettere, libelli. I tre accompagnatori principali sono Retz, Mademoiselle de Montpensier, e Mazzarino.

Since time immemorial, people have passed through these misty mountains as they traveled between the Scottish lowlands and highlands. The old ways through the mountains - the Mounth passes, as they are collectively called - are the subject of this book. Twelve roads are profiled, from the Causey Mounth on the eastern coast to the Monega Pass deep in the heart of Scotland. Each route is considered from an historical perspective, followed by a guide to walking the road (or what remains of the road) today.

In the heroic days of rail travel, you could dine on kippers and champagne aboard the Brighton Belle, smoke a postprandial cigar as the Golden Arrow approached Paris or be shaved by the Flying Scotsman's onboard barber. Everyone from schoolboys to socialites knew of these glamorous trains. Andrew Martin recreates famous train journeys by travelling aboard their nearest modern-day equivalents, describing the disappearance of the extravagance and luxury.

In a centuries-old tradition, farmers in northwestern Iceland scour remote coastal plains for the down of nesting eider ducks. High inside a vast cave in Borneo, men perched atop rickety ladders collect swiftlets’ nests, a delicacy believed to be a cure for almost anything. Eiderdown and edible birds’ nests: both are luxury products, ultimately destined for the super-rich. To the rest of the world these materials are mere commodities but to the harvesters they are all imbued with myth, tradition, folklore and ritual, and form part of a shared identity and history.

1968 reist der Autor Franz Fühmann von Ost-Berlin nach Budapest. Hinter ihm liegen die Überwindung seiner Alkoholsucht und die Desillusionierung durch den Einmarsch der Truppen des Warschauer Paktes in Prag. Schreibend beginnt er, sein Handeln innerhalb der sozialistischen Gesellschaft, in der er lebt, zu reflektieren, und er schafft es, die Krise als Ausgangspunkt für einen Neuanfang zu nutzen.

Es sind unerhörte Episoden, die Ulrich Wickert aus Frankreichs Geschichte und Gegenwart zu erzählen weiß. Er spannt einen weiten historischen Bogen und lässt es sich nicht nehmen, eine Fülle von komischen wie nachdenklich stimmenden Erfahrungen auszubreiten. Mit dem ihm eigenen Witz und mit pointierter Ironie wägt Wickert ab, was die Franzosen so liebenswert macht und weswegen man ihrer bisweilen überdrüssig ist. "Vom Glück, Franzose zu sein" - lauter wahre Begebenheiten, die so unglaublich klingen, als handelten sie von einem unbekannten Land: von Frankreich.

La storia della Contessa Matilde e del suo territorio: La Storia, I Canossa (le origini, la famiglia, i possedimenti), I personaggi, Matilde di Canossa, Enrico IV, Gregorio VII, I castelli, Il sistema fortificato canossano, Le Pievi, La direttrice matildica, Il Circuito dei Castelli matildici e delle corti reggiane, L'attualità di Canossa, L'artigianato artistico: l'ars canusina, I prodotti enogastronomici e Le strade dei vini e dei sapori.

We follow in the footsteps of the intrepid British traveller as they explore the far-flung shores of the world in the company of some of the world’s finest chroniclers, including Charles Darwin, Kenneth Williams, James Boswell, Freya Stark, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Fanny Trollope, Mungo Park, Nancy Mitford, Wilfred Thesiger, Horace Walpole, Evelyn Waugh and many others, in this entertaining collection of travellers’ tales.

Join us on a fascinating ramble through the towns and villages of the British Isles during the last 400 years in the company of some of its most illustrious chroniclers, including Jane Austen, William Cobbett, Daniel Defoe, Sir Walter Scott, Virginia Woolf, Francis Kilvert, Celia Fiennes, Chips Channon, Fanny Burney and many others, told entirely in their own words.