SARA WHEELER

After writing two highly praised travel books, Sara Wheeler was accepted by the American government to be the first foreigner on their National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists' and Writers Program. She spent seven months on the continent, travelling from the fabled Ross Ice Shelf to the Pole itself, the remoter reaches of the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the balmy Antarctic Peninsula. Terra Incognita is a meditation on the landscape, myths and history of one of the remotest parts of the globe, as well as an encounter with the international temporary residents of the region - living in close confinement despite the surrounding acres of white space - and the mechanics of day-to-day life in extraordinary conditions. Through Sara Wheeler, the Antarctic is revealed, in all its seductive mystery.

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

A wonderfully original book about contemporary Russia as seen on journeys in search of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev.SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANDFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD 2020With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides a Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others a Wheeler travels the length and breadth of Russia to make connections between then and now. On the Trans-Siberian railway, at sail on the Black Sea, or while watching television with her hosts in Soviet apartment blocks, Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news a a Russia of humanity and daily struggles.At a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, Wheeler gives a voice to the ordinary people of Russia and discovers how the writers of the past continue to represent their country today.

Smashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, herding reindeer across the tundra with Lapps and shadowing the Trans-Alaskan pipeline with truckers, the author discovers a complex and ambiguous land belonging both to ancient myth and modern controvery.

Britains foremost woman travel writer Sara Wheeler records her life of adventure, from the Antarctic to ZanzibarFunny, furious writing from the queen of intrepid travelDaily TelegraphIntrepid and sparky, full of canny quips and lightly poetic observationsMail on SundayMagnificent and unusual Viv Groskop, SpectatorSara 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 Sami 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.

A modern classic on exploring and understanding the Antarctic, the most uncharted place on our planet.Terra Incognita is a meditation on the landscape, myths and history of one of the remotest parts of the globe, as well as an encounter with the international temporary residents of the region - living in close confinement despite the surrounding acres of white space - and the mechanics of day-to-day life in extraordinary conditions. Through Sara Wheeler, the Antarctic is revealed, in all its seductive mystery.Antarctica could hope for no better chronicler: spirited, humorous and highly intelligent, she is also a writer of rare talentObserver

In a series of remarkable books - Travels in a Thin Country, Terra Incognita, Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry Garrard, Too Close to the Sun and TheMagnetic North - Sara Wheeler has shown that she is not only one of the finest travel writers of her generation but a very fine biographer too. Published to coincide with her fiftieth birthday, Access All Areas gathers together a selection of her shorter pieces, both journalism and introductions to other books.As one would expect, the frozen poles of the earth feature often, whether she is spending the night in Captain Scotts hut or reliving the adventures of Shackleton and Nansen. But its hot places feature too - Malawi, Kerala, Cuba and Bangladesh. She writes brilliantly of her heroes - Mary Kingsley, Fanny Trollope, Norman Lewis, Jan Morris and Sybille Bedford - and about the pains and pleasures of writing biography. Worried that having her children would end her roaming, she took her children with her, to the Arctic, and on a brilliantly depicted cruise on the QE2. She learns to bellydance, to strip, and to walk on the wing of a biplane at 3000 feet.This is an immensely varied and satisfying collection.

A wonderfully original book about contemporary Russia as seen on journeys in search of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev.SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANDFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD 2020With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others Wheeler travels the length and breadth of Russia to make connections between then and now. On the Trans-Siberian railway, at sail on the Black Sea, or while watching television with her hosts in Soviet apartment blocks, Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news a Russia of humanity and daily struggles.At a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, Wheeler gives a voice to the ordinary people of Russia and discovers how the writers of the past continue to represent their country today.

Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) was one of the youngest members of Captain Scotts final expedition to the Antarctic. Cherry undertook an epic journey in the Antarctic winter to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. The temperature fell to seventy below, it was dark all the time, his teeth shattered in the cold and the tent blew away. But we kept our tempers, Cherry wrote, even with God.After serving in the First War Cherry was invalided home, and with the zealous encouragement of his neighbour Bernard Shaw he wrote a masterpiece. In The Worst Journey in the World Cherry transformed tragedy and grief into something fine. But as the years unravelled he faced a terrible struggle against depression, breakdown and despair, haunted by the possibility that he could have saved Scott and his companions. This is the first biography of Cherry. Sara Wheeler, who has travelled extensively in the Antarctic, has had unrestricted access to new material and the full co-operation of Cherrys family.

Conservationist, scholar, soldier, white hunter and fabled lover - Denys Finch Hatton was an aristocrat of leonine nonchalance. After a dazzling career at Eton and Oxford, he sailed in 1910 for British East Africa - still then the land of the pioneer. Sara Wheeler reveals the truth behind his love affairs with the glamorous aviatrix Beryl Markham, and - famously - with Karen Blixen, a romance immortalised in her memoir Out of Africa. No one who ever met him, his Times obituary concluded, whether man or woman, old or young, white or black, failed to come under his spell.

Brave, beautifully written and shrewdly researched . . . this is a riveting read by a writer at the top of her game.The TimesSeldom have I read such an enthralling biography.Literary ReviewAn exemplary Life, about a strange English writer of rare gifts and peculiar greatness.IndependentAs adventurous and intelligent as its roving subject.TelegraphSuperb.SpectatorA captivating authorised biography of the legendary writer Jan Morris.She was the twentieth century. Who wouldnt want to write her biography?When Jan Morris joined the 1953 Everest expedition and was first to get news of the ascent back to London, she became the most famous journalist in the world. So began a glittering career covering the Eichmann trial, interviewing Che Guevara and scooping the story of Suez collusion. Morris transitioned in the early seventies and documented the experience in Conundrum. She was a pioneer and her books, including Venice and the Pax Britannica trilogy, have inspired readers across the globe.Here, renowned travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler uncovers the complexity of this twentieth-century icon to reveal a mosaic of contradictions. Morriss work conjured the spirit of place, yet her late masterpiece Trieste celebrates the meaning of nowhere; she was a Welsh nationalist who wasnt Welsh; a preacher of kindness with a cruel side. This is a portrait of an astonishing life, and a scintillating story of longing, travel and never reaching home.Wonderful. Paul TherouxBrilliant.Simon JenkinsSuperb.Colin ThubronBreathtakingly good. Michael Palin

Sara Wheeler is the literary maestro of the earths frozen regions... The prose is startling and sharp-edged as the icy landscapes themselvesFinancial TimesSmashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, herding reindeer across the tundra with Lapps and shadowing the Trans-Alaskan pipeline with truckers, Sara Wheeler discovers a complex and ambiguous land belonging both to ancient myth and modern controversy. The Magnetic North is an adroit combination of history, science and reflection in which Wheeler meditates on the role of the Arctic: fragmented lands which fed imaginations long before the scientists and oilmen showed up (not to mention desperado explorers who ate their own shoes). The Magnetic North tells of all this, plus gulag ghosts, old and new Russia, colliding cultures and bioaccumulated toxins in polar bears.A stylish and engaging account of some of the worlds most mysterious, unknowable spots and, like the best travel writing, is infused with the writers reflections on growing up, life and deathDaily Telegraph

Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) fue uno de los miembros más jóvenes de la última expedición polar del Capitán Scott.Esta es la dramática biografía de un hombre que sobrevivió a las duras y traicioneras condiciones de la Antártida, luchando contra la depresión, el fracaso y la desesperación, y con la obsesión de la remota posibilidad de haber salvado a Scott y a sus compañeros.Esta es la primera biografía escrita sobre el explorador. Sara Wheeler ha tenido acceso a todo su legado, reconsttruyendo los hechos y los personajes que los protagonizaron. Una labor impecablr que ha dado como resultado una obra que sacude al lector.

Shortlisted for the Dolman Travel Book AwardAfter reckoning with the ends of the earth in acclaimed books such as Terra Incognita and The Magnetic North, Sara Wheeler rediscovered America thirty-five years after her first Greyhound trip across the country. She returns in turbulent midlife to trace the steps of six women who fled various sorts of trouble in nineteenth-century England and went to the United States to reinvent themselves.Her travel companions include Fanny Trollope, mother of Anthony and author of the biting Domestic Manners of the Americans; the actress Fanny Kemble, who shocked the nation with her passionate first-hand indictment of slavery; the prolifically pamphleteering economist Harriet Martineau; the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, who had never been more than twelve miles from her Yorkshire village before she sailed to the New World; the traveller Isabella Bird, whose many ailments remained in check as long as she was scaling the Rockies; and the novelist Catherine Hubback, niece of Jane Austen, who deposited her husband in a madhouse and rode the brand-new rails to San Francisco.Tough-minded outsiders, these womens truest qualities emerged in a country as incomplete and tentative as their native land was staid and settled. And they discovered second acts for themselves at a time when the world expected them to disappear politely. From the swampy heat of Georgias Sea Islands to the icy purity of the Cascades, Sara Wheeler finds their path, and her own.

Squeezed in between a vast ocean and the longest mountain range on earth, Chile is 2,600 miles long and never more than 110 miles wide - not a country which lends itself to maps, as Sara Wheeler found out when she travelled alone with two carpetbags from the top to the bottom, form the driest desert in the world to the sepulchral wastes of Antarctica.This is Sara Wheelers account of a six-month odyssey which included Christmas Day at 13,000 feet with a llama sandwich, a sex hotel in Santiago and a trip round Cape Horn delivering a coffin. Eloquent, astute and amusing, CHILE: TRAVELS IN A THIN COUNTRY confirms Sara Wheelers place in the front rank of todays travel writers.

A spirited and truly compelling literary biography of the immortal travel writer, journalist and twentieth-century trans pioneer, Jan Morris.When Jan Morris joined the 1953 Everest expedition and was first to get news of the ascent back to the young Queen Elizabeth in London, she became the most famous journalist in the world overnight. So began a glittering career that saw her cover the Eichmann trial, interview Che Guevara and scoop the story of Suez collusion.Morris transitioned in the early seventies, and documented the experience in Conundrum, still considered a classic of trans literature today. She was a trailblazer adored around the globe and her books, including Venice and the Pax Britannica trilogy, have inspired hundreds of thousands of readers.In these pages, celebrated travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler uncovers the complexity of this twentieth-century icon to reveal a mosaic of contradictions. Morris conjured the spirit of place in her work, yet her late masterpiece Trieste celebrates the meaning of nowhere; she was a Welsh nationalist who wasnt Welsh; and a preacher of kindness with a cruel side.Drawing on unprecedented access to Morriss papers as well as interviews with family, friends and colleagues, Wheeler assembles a captivating portrait of her astonishing lifea story of longing, traveling and never reaching home.