Thorogood's version of 'up hill and down dale' takes him over cliffs and up volcanoes - all in the pursuit of pitcher plants, irises, orchids... Illustrated by the author.
A brilliant narrative of the interconnected lives of two Renaissance Portuguese men whose travels to India and China unseated contemporary certainties. Dazzling.
A revisionist account by the distinguished historian, which argues that Magellan was less of a hero and more of a treacherous, irresponsible, tyrannical adventurer.
Its second subtitle is "an adventurous history of botany". JG is a scientist and an historian of exploration (his "The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea" was excellent).
How the daughter of Babur, first Mughal Emperor, wrangled her way out of the harem (for a while) to travel around India, to Persia and beyond. Based on her own account.
The story of the first contact between the Haida and other indigenous peoples of the Pacific North West with Europeans - and what came after. Told very powerfully in a graphic form that comb... read more
In 1930 a (very) young British explorer led a small team to explore the eastern coast of Greenland - an unknown expanse, mysterious even to the Inuits.
Is it to exalt the mountain or the climber that the mountain should be climbed? Or to gain a good vantage point for telling things, pace James Baldwin?
Louis-Antoine de Bougainville and Pierre Magnol to Sir David Attenborough, via Lady Gaga... The author is, amongst other roles, the president of the Linnaean Society.