A Corkscrew Is Most Useful: The Travellers of Empire

by Nicholas Murray

In the early 19th century there was a huge surge forward in travel of all kinds. Queen Victoria's accession in 1837 came barely a year after John Murray's first guidebook was published. Then in 1838 Bradshaw's famous portable railway timetable appeared. In 1841 Thomas Cook, the world's first travel agent, organised its first tour (from London to Leicester and back by train). The age of mass tourism had arrived. Side by side with it another phenomenom began to develop: exploration to wilder shores and uncharted lands. This is the focus of Nicholas Murray's fascinating book which draws upon the extraordinary stories of Livingstone's journey across Africa; Burton and Speke reaching Lake Tanganyika; John Stuart crossing Australia from south to north; Livingstone reaching the Zambezi; Richard Burton's travels across Arabia, and countless others' extraordinary and brave expeditions.

Genres: Travel, History, Nonfiction

544 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 3, 2008

About the author

Nicholas Murray is an English biographer, poet and journalist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichola...


Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Naomi]

Interesting in its own right and thought-provoking in the context of the history of tourism and also the history of adventure fiction. As you might expect, it quotes extensively from Victorian travel writers, so if you decide to read it you're going to have to brace yourself for a range of period-typical racism from "breathtakingly racist even for the time" to "surprisingly mild racism?"

[russell barnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

"It was okay", is slightly damning.

I saw this in a charity shop, and the title, cover and premise looked like it was going to be much, much better than it was. It wasn't terrible, as any book entirely populated by mad Victorians traveling the globe in various degrees of mufti, and with various degrees of success wouldn't be. The thing is, with that brief it should be hilarious, but it's sadly not. In fact it's a bit boring and waffle-y, and it isn't helped by Murray's occasionally quoting Bruce Chatwin who, oh, he's also written a biog of.

It needs less Bruce Chatwin, fewer chapters and more stories like Missionary James Woods who regales his readers how the Pacific Islanders are in awe of him because of his Faith, shortly before they club him to death in the sea and eat him. It needed much more of that sort of thing.

[Woolfhead · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three stars only for the amount of work that went into it. The book jacket is very misleading as to the contents. I was expecting less summary, less biography, more joy, more eccentricity.

[Bracha Simcha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jacket review is misleading. The shear amount of work that went into writing this book is impressive, but it was very dry, and not really a novel.

[Cat {Pemberley and Beyond} · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sadly I lost faith in the accuracy of the dates of events after the first chapter about Bird, which says that she got married to the same man in two very different years. This left me wondering as to how accurate other parts of the book were.

Apart from that, the book was enjoyable and interesting. The conclusion in particular was thought-provoking, which was an unexpected joy.

[An Abundance of Books]

While interesting, it's a bit dry and is not a book that I can read straight through. I have to read it in smaller bits.

[Trisha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable and informative giving good presence to all those intrepid women who went it alone. Really enjoyed it