Umbrella Books.com

A literary tour of Bangkok

sarah — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:13:40 +0000

The Thailand Creative and Design Center (TCDC) opened in Bangkok’s Emporium Centre in November 2005. This enterprising organisation aims to let the world know that Thailand wants to compete in the contemporary world of design. There is a large library that, during the January weekend that I was there, was full of youth (who apparently would otherwise have been shopping) sitting and reading.

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A literary approach to Venice

sarah — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:05:43 +0000

So much has been written about Venice – what is there to add? But of course there is always something new and for me, initially at least, it was the rain. It poured. “The vice in the air, otherwise, was too much like the breath of fate. The weather had changed, the rain was ugly, the wind wicked, the sea impossible” (Henry James The Wings of the Dove).

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A Literary Tour of Patmos

sarah — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:07:29 +0000

A literary tour of Patmos

Inveterate traveller Sarah Anderson again packs her trunk with books, this time bound for the Greek Islands

At least I thought I was alone but I quickly realised that I was sharing the house with a variety of cats, nothing new as I read: ” … and passed some score of cats, most of them yellow (I afterward learned that there are forty monks and sixty cats in the monastery” - (The Isle that Is Called Patmos, William Edgar Geil, 1897).

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A literary tour up the Ganges

sarah — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 11:12:23 +0000

From the moment that I heard that Louise Nicholson was leading a tour up the Ganges, following in the footsteps of 18th and 19th century European artists, I knew that I wanted to go. We started in Kolkata: “It is a huge city and fine, and is called the City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories; rich in British achievement - military, political, commercial; rich in the results of the miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings” (Mark Twain in Following the Equator). To continue reading at Timesonline click here

A Literary Tour of Scotland

sarah — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 16:43:53 +0000

A literary tour to Scotland

Sarah Anderson turns to her ancestors and Scotland’s “booktown” for inspiration after the nightlife is a let-down in Scotland’s Dumfries and Galloway

A literary tour of the Amazon

sarah — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:00:11 +0000

An invitation to the Amazon Rainforest was something I couldn’t resist.

On our first night, we stayed at Augustu’s Hotel in Altamira, south of Belem at the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil - the only hotel in town with a swimming pool. While there, we watched the last day of the annual Amazon Olympics between several Indian tribes, many of whom succumbed to heat exhaustion – this made me feel slightly less wimpish as I dissolved into pools of heat.

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A Literary Tour of Amsterdam

sarah — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:26:20 +0000

Arriving at the Central Station in Amsterdam means being able to walk to any hotel near the centre. We were staying at the Hotel Rho - conveniently located off Dam Square; the rooms are fairly basic but it had once been a theatre so you walk into a large airy atrium.

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A literary cruise to Antarctica

sarah — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:06:57 +0000

Much has changed since “unbroken beech-forests clothe the mountainside up as far as the line known as the upper tree level” (E.Lucas Bridges, Uttermost Part of the Earth, 1947); now there are practically no trees left and there are many differences since Bruce Chatwin wrote In Patagonia in 1977 when “The blue-faced inhabitants of this apparently childless town glared at strangers unkindly”.

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Home again after three months on the road

sarah — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 19:18:39 +0000

By the end of next week I shall be back in England. So much has happened in the last three months yet I’m no closer to knowing what I want to do next with my life. I had hoped I would bump into something or someone that would help give me some inspiration knowing that, in reality, arriving back at Heathrow with my life sewn up would be a bit too neat - although I have thought of giving lectures on the history of travel literature to tie in both the bookshop and the Online pieces I have been writing.

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To Cambodia by boat

sarah — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:34:33 +0000

The Mekong is the longest river in southeast Asia and, by volume, the tenth longest in the world; it rises in eastern Tibet, its exact source only having been definitively located by Michel Peissel’s expedition in September 1994 and its mouth is in the South China Sea - ” … the river had been a central part of south-east Asia’s history before its existence was known to the western world, and that later its lower reaches had been the setting for European rivalry both commercial and religious” wrote Milton Osborne (The Mekong, 2000).

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