TRAVELLERS have been writing about their journeys for millennia – the Greek writer and geographer Pausanias, born in 110AD in Asia Minor, a province of the Roman Empire, is generally considered to be the world’s first travel writer. His 21st century successors have trekked to the remotest locations, into rainforests, across the Antarctic, up the highest mountains and through some of the most dangerous places on earth.
But travel writing can be just as fascinating when it is about our internal journeys, explorations of places closer to home, or famous cities that are endlessly charismatic and ever-changing. Sherborne’s Travel Writing Festival, from 11th to 13th April, will take audiences to all these places and more.
In his introduction to this year’s programme, festival curator Rory MacLean (pictured) says: “Thirty years ago, when I tutored my first travel writing workshop, every single participant was male. Truth was, travel writing had been a male preserve since Herodotus and Pausanias first put pen to papyrus.”
Notable exceptions, as he says, include Freya Stark and Dervla Murphy, but they were in a very small minority.
How it’s changed in those 30 years – the line-up of 12 speakers this year has more women than men (seven to five) and includes best-selling novelist Victoria Hislop, talking about her new book, The Figurine, set in Greece, as are many of her books, around the Aegean. Her talk is on Friday 11th April at 7pm at the Powell Theatre, the venue for all the festival events.
Journeys can be musical – the opening talk, on Friday 11th at 5pm, is by music PR Alan Edwards, describing some of his globe-trotting, rock’n’roll adventures, from Jamaica to the old Soviet Union, with bands and performers from Bowie to Blondie, the Rolling Stones to the Spice Girls.
Travel can be historical and exotic – Nandini Das’s talk How to Greet an Elephant, on Saturday at noon, will take the festival audience to the Mughal Empire – seen through the eyes of traveller Thomas Roe, who arrived in India in 1616 as James I’s first ambassador to the glittering Mughal court.
The first Saturday event, at 10.30am, features Ann Morgan “Reading the World” – in 2012 she set out to read a book from every country, and her talk reflects how this has become a lifelong project. The other Saturday speakers are Barnaby Rogerson, on The House Divided, his latest book about North Africa and the history of Islam, Kapka Kassabova on Anima: A Wild Pursuit, a portrait of the last highlanders of Europe, in Bulgaria’s Pirin Mountains, former Granta Young Novelist of the Year Xiaolu Guo on her latest book, My Battle of Hastings, and Sophy Roberts on A Training School for Elephants, tracing a 19th century colonial expedition, with a journey that takes her from Dorset to Donegal, Tanzania to India, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Sunday programme begins with Jonathan Lorie on A Beginner’s Guide to Writing Travel, followed by Alexander Christie-Miller on To The City – Istanbul, Mevan Babakar, a Syrian refugee in the 1990s, on her memoir The Bicycle, and ends with Horatio Clare’s Adventures in a Strange Country, continuing his explorations of the mental health system.
For full details pick up a festival leaflet or visit sherbornetravelwritingfestival.com