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Books Recommended by Our Reading Friends

Margaret and Barry Williamson
February 2021


A recommendation from Our Own Correspondent (and endorsed by Barry) is The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow, 2021. Hailed as a Radical Revision and an Intellectual Feast, it is ground-breaking in understanding how human beings came to be the way they are.

***

Hearing that we are camped at Land’s End, Margaret's old friend Julie recommends The Salt Path by Raynor Winn. It’s the true story of a homeless couple who in 2013 walked the 630-mile Southwest Coastal Path from Minehead in Somerset round Devon and Cornwall to Poole in Dorset, carrying a tent and very little money. The Sunday Times bestseller was followed by her sequel: The Wild Silence.

​***


Helen, ​a friend and former motorhomer now living in France, regularly recommends books with a theme of travel and countryside. Some of these are now on our Kindles (the ideal travelling companion) ready for our own journeys. Note: None of us are on Amazon commission: other sources are available, such as bookshop.org. 

The Debatable Land: The Lost World Between Scotland and England by Graham Robb, 2018. A keen walker and cyclist living on the border north of Carlisle. The independent territory that used to exist between Scotland and England was a land of cattle reivers and bloody feuds. This book is a fascinating exploration of the geography, history, mythology and character of the Anglo-Scottish borderlands. Margaret enjoyed the interesting contrast of ancient and modern times, as Robb varies his style from research to recent anecdote.

The Discovery of France by Graham Robb, 2007. A brilliantly told journey through the story and history of the country, from the Revolution to the First World War, uncovering the real France. Margaret's great friend Pat (retired French teacher and Francophile) adds her praise: "Wonderful, totally absorbing, I read increasingly slowly because I didn't want it to finish, one of the best books I've ever read, although I don't think any part of it equals the shock/horror of the first few pages." 

The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe by Graham Robb, 2013. Cycling the legendary 'Via Heraklea' from the south-western tip of the Iberian Peninsula, across the Pyrenees and towards the Alps, Graham changes his view of pre-Roman Celtic civilisation. 

The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna, originally written in Finnish in 1975, published in English in 1995 (and in many other languages). Finnish wit as sharp as the Arctic weather.

The Running Hare: The Secret Life of Farmland, 2016, and The Wood: The Life & Times of Cockshutt Wood, 2018, by John Lewis-Stempel. Two of many books by a farmer who is Britain’s finest nature writer.

The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp by the Welsh poet W H Davies ("What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare"). First published in 1908, it covers his life as a tramp in England and America. Barry's own well-worn paperback has a preface by George Bernard Shaw. 

Updated February 2025

Further suggestions from the ​extensive library of our friend Helen in France, focussed on travel and sailing:

Racundra’s First Cruise by Arthur Ransome (author of the ‘Swallows and Amazons’ series of children’s books). Published in 1923, this earlier work is a wonderful account of his voyage across the Baltic Sea from Riga in Latvia to Helsinki in Finland and back, in the 9-metre sailing boat that he had built. Ransome was a journalist for the Daily News, based in Russia. He is reputed to have played chess against Lenin and he married Trotsky’s secretary, Evgenia Shelepina, in 1924, spending their honeymoon on Racundra’s third cruise!

Narrow Dog to Carcassonne and Narrow Dog to Indian River by Terry Darlington, 2008. Terry’s hilarious accounts of bumping along in a barge with his wife and whippet. The first is on the English canals, across the Channel and down through France. The sequel is in the USA.

Watersteps Through France by Bill and Laurel Cooper, 1991. This diverting pair of writers inspired the Darlingtons, with their account of travelling through Europe on a big Dutch barge.
 
Sailing Across Europe by Negley Farson, 1926. An American foreign correspondent and author of many books on fishing and travel, including Caucasian Journey, a  trek across the Caucasus  on horseback in 1929.

Iberia, Spanish Travels and Reflections by James Michener, 1968. An American who first discovered Spain and Portugal before the Spanish Civil War, working his passage on a boat carrying machinery from Dundee to Italy and returning with Spanish oranges. A must read for anyone travelling through Spain and Portugal.
 
Three against the Wilderness by Eric Collier, 1959. A riveting account of the 26 years that he, his half-Indian wife Lillian and son Veasy spent homesteading in the isolated Canadian wilderness. They played a part in re-establishing beaver colonies there, all this in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.

***

Another reading friend, Brian, is an old student of Barry’s now living in North Yorkshire. As a musician and dog-owner, his eclectic recommendations include the poetry and novels of Thomas Hardy, as well as the following more recent publications:

Music as Medicine: How We Can Harness Its Therapeutic Power, 2025 and earlier books by Daniel Levitin.

The Wisdom of Old Dogs: Lessons in Life, Love and Friendship, 2020 by Elli H Radinger.
A former German attorney, Elli devotes herself to the study of animals (mainly wolves). Growing old at the same time as her dogs, she has some appealing lessons for life.

Antifragile Things that Gain from Disorder, 2012 and Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2007 by N N Taleb. The Lebanese-American author, an essayist, mathematical statistician and risk analyst, poses interesting views.






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