Glowing Still

Britains foremost woman travel writer Sara Wheeler records her life of adventure, from the Antarctic to Zanzibar

Funny, furious writing from the queen of intrepid travelDaily Telegraph

Intrepid and sparky, full of canny quips and lightly poetic observationsMail on Sunday

Magnificent and unusual Viv Groskop, Spectator

Sara Wheeler is Britains foremost woman travel writer. Glowing Still is the story of her travelling life - what is important, revealing or funny - in a notoriously testosterone-laden field. Growing up among blue-collar Conservatives in Bristol where we didnt know anyone who wasnt like us, Wheeler knew she needed to get away. In her twenties she began a dramatic escape: Pole to Pole, via Poland. Glowing Still recalls happy days on Indias Puri Express; an Antarctic lavatory through which a seal popped up (hot fishy breath!); and the louche life of a Parisian shopgirl. Corralling reindeer with the Sámi in Arctic Sweden and towing her baby on a sledge, a helpful herdsman advised her to put foil down her bra to facilitate nursing.

Launching at Nubility, Wheeler voyages, via small children, to the welcoming port of Invisibility (she leaves Immobility for the next volume). As she writes in the introduction, when she set sail Role models were scarce in the travel-writing game. But advancing years usher in unheralded freedoms, and journeys end finds Wheeler at peace among Zanzibar dhows, contemplating our connection with other lives - the irreplaceable value that travel brings - and paying homage to her heroines, among them Martha Gellhorn, the ineffable war correspondent who furnishes Wheelers epigraph: I do not wish to be good. I wish to be hell on wheels, or dead.