Laura Stoddart: Off the Beaten Track [2002] hardback

A book of brief quotations about travel and exploration from those who love to get off the beaten track, and those who wish they'd stayed at home. Here you will read advice to the traveller, and reflections from travellers from many centuries: Captain Cook confidently declaring that no man will ever venture further than he has, Richard Burton musing on how to keep a wife alive in the tropics, and the unreliable Sir John Mandeville spinning his traveller's tales. Intrepid travellers such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Marco Polo, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Mary Kingsley, Isabella Bird, Captain Scott and Freya Stark- all of them are here, some of them awestruck at the majesty of their surroundings and others distinctly unimpressed. Laura Stoddart's delicious illustrations seize on the unexpected, and make a comment on what the author doesn't say. Her many admirers will find this wittily chosen anthology has all the charm of her very successful first book, Up the Garden Path.