Many readers think of owning a bookshop as some sort of dream job.
Sarah Anderson founded the iconic Travel Bookshop in 1979.
You might be familiar with this place even if you’ve never been to London. It was the inspiration for the bookshop in the 1998 Hugh Grant / Julia Roberts film Notting Hill.
But that’s not our concern here. I’ve never seen the film.
We’re talking books with the woman who curated the reading list for so many journeys both on and off the map.
What are the biggest challenges of running a bookshop?
Was there a ‘golden age’ of literary travel writing, and what’s the state of the genre today?
Who are Sarah’s favourite forgotten writers about place?
We’ve got all that and more in the last Personal Landscapes episode of 2023. Talk about ending the year on a high note.
Sarah Anderson founded The Travel Bookshop in 1979 and ran it for more than 30 years. She’s the author of Halfway to Venus, Sarah Anderson’s Travel Companion, and The Lost Art of Silence. She’s also an accomplished painter.
You can read more about her on her website, and follow her on Instagram.
These are the books we mentioned in the podcast:
- The Lost Art of Silence: Reconnecting to the Power and Beauty of Quiet
- Sarah Anderson’s Travel Companion
- Peter Hopkirk: Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, The Great Game
- Silence by Shusaku Endo
- Jonathan Raban: Old Glory, Hunting Mister Heartbreak
- Stanley Stewart: Frontiers of Heaven, In the Empire of Genghis Khan
- The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux
- Playing With Water by James Hamilton-Paterson
- The Travels of Ibn Battutah
- West With The Night by Beryl Markham
- The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
- The Fearful Void by Geoffrey Moorehouse
- Vikram Seth: From Heaven Lake, Golden Gate
- Peter Matthiessen: The Snow Leopard, Far Tortuga
- The Way of the World by Nicholas Bouvier
- Eothen by Alexander Kinglake
- The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron
- Gavin Young: In Search of Conrad, Slow Boats to China, Slow Boats Home
We also mentioned:
- Notting Hill film
- 19th century place writers: Gertrude Bell, Mary Kingsley, Edith Durham, Freya Stark, Marianne North
- The 1980s renaissance: Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Jonathan Raban, Gavin Young, Norman Lewis
- Between-the-war peak: Robert Byron, Norman Douglas, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Lawrence Durrell
- 1990s revival: Sara Wheeler, William Dalrymple, Rory MacLean, Eric Hansen, Philip Marsden
- Current writers: Kapka Kassabova, Richard Grant
- Thomas Cook Travel Book Awards winners list
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