Great Journeys of The World

by Ernie Dingo (Contributor), Ernie Dingo, Evelyn Glennie

"Great Journeys of the World" is a collection of diary-based travel essays by internationally renowned writers and performers who have undertaken journeys of discovery in some of the most exciting parts of the globe. They are perceptive observers who combine a sense of history with an appreciation of the contemporary experience of the people they encounter. Their journeys go beyond landscape and spectacle, to insight and discovery, not only about the places they visit but also themselves. The travellers/authors Ernie Dingo, Australia's leading Aboriginal actor, who travels across the Kimberley region in Australia, a remote area of immense significance to Aboriginals; Sandi Toksvig, comedienne and writer, who journeys down the Zambezi from its source to the Indian Ocean with a family heirloom, a dug-out canoe said to have carried Livingstone down the same river; Juliet Stevenson, actress, follows the footsteps of Isabelle Eberhardt across the Sahara in Algeria; Tony Robinson, writer, comedian and historian examines the lure of hedonism in several of the islands in the Caribbean; Evelyn Glennie, the world's leading solo percussionist, explores the rhythm, music and religion in Korea; and Damien Gorman, Irish film maker and poet, traces the footsteps of Cortez to learn about the Spanish and the Incas in Mexico.

Genres: Travel

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating collection. Each of the celebrities has written they're own account of their travels and so the voices, quality of writing and tone are all highly distinct, to the extent that I found some poetic, insightful, beautiful or amusing (Sandi Toksvig, Juliet Stevenson, Damian Gorman) and others tedious (Evelyn Glennie) and unpleasant or creepy (Tony Robinson), despite the interesting nature of the places they were visiting or their afable personalities. I'm not sure individuals would be given such control and free reign should this book be written now, and suspect entries would have been more uniform, so it's fascinating to read just from this point of view, and, for the better written entries, such a pleasure to travel in the mind, if not physically at the moment.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a book! A wonderful compendium of short travel diaries by a variety of famous people in completely different countries for completely different motivations. I gather this book accompanied a BBC documentary and if it is as good as the book, it would have been well worth a watch. You can quite literally travel the world from the comfort of your home in this book. Each author has a different style of writing - some profound, some entertaining, some holistic, all interesting. I believe there is a similar book of rail journeys which I now intend to track down. It is a little dated but absolutely worth a read.