Listen:
Availability:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Sat, 14 Nov 2009, 10:00 on BBC Radio 4.
Synopsis
Jan Morris has been travelling and writing about her journeys for more than 50 years. John McCarthy talks to her about some of the individuals she has encountered all over the world in that half century - rich and poor, renowned and obscure, friendly and unwelcoming. They reflect on the nature of travel and whether it is more about places or people.
John also talks to travel writer and journalist Dea Birkett, who is a judge for the Oldie magazine Travel Awards. She reveals which was the worst airport, the best railway station and why there should be an award for cruelty to trees. She and John discuss what can make journeys more pleasurable for the older traveller.
Jan Morris
Jan Morris is a British historian, biographer and an award winning author. Jan wrote about the successful 1953 Everest expedition. Her first book Coast to Coast recounts a year spent travelling the United States and it won the 1957 Cafe Royal Prize. In her latest book Contact!, Jan focuses on people. It is a collection of short observations of individuals and characters Jan met fleetingly on her travels.
Contact! – Brief encounters in a lifetime of travel
Publisher: Faber and Faber
ISBN-10: 0571250688
ISBN-13: 978-0571250684
Dea Birkett
Dea Birkett is a journalist, travel writer and broadcaster. Her first travel book, Jella: A Woman At Sea, won the Somerset Maugham award in 1993 of the Year; Dea is the author of Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers and Spinsters Abroad, she also writes a column in the Guardian on Travelling with Kids and is behind the Kids in Museums Campaign.
Jella: A Woman at Sea
Publisher: Gollancz
ISBN-10: 0575051256
ISBN-13: 978-0575051256
Off the Beaten Track: Three Centuries of Women Travellers
Publisher: National Portrait Gallery Publications
ISBN-10: 185514526X
ISBN-13: 978-1855145269
The Oldie
The Oldie “is a monthly magazine launched in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who was the editor of Private Eye. It carries general interest articles, humour and cartoons.”
Broadcast
-
Sat 14 Nov 200910:00
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~15~RS~){kind=small}