chevinhawk

This thread seems a bit quiet, so I hope I'm not the only one around who loves travel writing. Favourites include Dervla Murphy, Eric Newby and Sara Wheeler, I like the Jonathan Raban book I've read, William Dalrymple is one I must try, and can't abide Bill Bryson or Tim Moore. I also love a lot of the exploration/climbing writers like Joe Simpson, Stephen Venables and Chris Bonington, as well as some of the older writers (like Eric Shipton and Maurice Herzog's Annapurna)

One would have to be a Jane Austen, probably Persuasion. Becky Sharp is definitely my type of girl, so Vanity Fair has to be in there. I also adore Dickens, so one of his will have to go in. Probably David Copperfield - there are just so many wonderful characters in it.

For me, it has to be Victorian classics: Dickens, Trollope, Eliot, Collins, Thackeray and all. Not just English either - Tolstoy, Zola and so on. There's nothing like curling up and immersing oneself deep into the nineteenth century with a really good, in-depth, story - they just don't tell them like that any more!