Title: 1001 Historic Sites

Author: Richard Cavendish

Publisher: Octopus

Price: £20.00

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Travel Guide

Category: Travel Writing

This book is the only guide you will need to explore all the most important historical sites on the planet. From Stonehenge to the Great Wall of China, from Sterkfontein Caves - the 'cradle of humanity' in South Africa to Checkpoint Charlie, Germany and everywhere inbetween. The book explores all the sites that bear significance to us today. Places where Kings and Queens were crowned, wars were won and lost, people worship are all featured here, as well as sites that saw great advancements in structural engineering. Some will be familiar to all, others are less well-known but informed, entertaining text and stunning photography will ensure the reader has immense satisfaction at the discovery of each and every one.

Title: Going as Far as I Can

Author: Duncan Fallowell

Publisher: Profile

Price: £12.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Travel Guide

Category: Travel Writing

When Duncan Fallowell was left some money by a friend he decided to put into practice a long held idea – to travel as far as possible from home so that he need never travel again and could relax. For him this meant travelling to New Zealand, where another fantasy soon asserted itself – ‘to find the place of perfect exile’. Fallowell’s curiosity leads him onto the strangest paths and he found himself in pursuit of unknown painters and lost buildings and sex underground, of Karl Popper and a creature with the third eye and rosé wine, of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier who’d toured the country in the year of Fallowell’s birth, of suicidal writers and nuns and elusive answers to impossible questions. The faraway paradise gradually turns into a glittering stranger on the Pacific rim, filled with the uncertainties of our times - but also a wonderful place to breathe. The result is a moving encounter with the past, an anxious gaze into the future, but most of all a vivid voyage through the contemporary world, by turns profound, comical and erotic.

Title: Great Escapes Around the World

Author: Angelika Taschen (Editor)

Publisher: Taschen

Price: £29.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Travel Guide

Category: Travel Writing

Whether you want to take a relaxing vacation in Asia, a backpacking journey in South America, a road trip in the USA, a cultural tour in Europe, or a safari in Africa, we've got the most inspiring and eclectic collection of hotels, guesthouses, boats, lodges, spas, and houseboats that you could ask for. Just flip through the pages of this new compilation of dreamy spots to plan your next holiday, wherever it may be. Highlights include: in Kerala, India, futuristic-looking, Star Wars-style houseboats made of bamboo poles, palm leaves, and coconut fibers; the best place for a delectable cup of joe: a luxury lodge and spa on a java plantation in (you guessed it) Java; an Ayurvedic spa in the Himalayas where nothing matters but peace and relaxation; a lush Kenyan open-walled hut fashioned from tree trunks and shielded from the sun by a sumptuous thatched roof; Gio Ponti's sleek blue and white hotel perched on the cliffs in Sorrento, Italy; an elegant auberge in Napa Valley, California where you can stay during your wine tasting tour; a historic ranch nestled in a Death Valley oasis; an adobe hotel in the Chilean desert; in Bolivia's Uyuni salt desert, a hotel built entirely of salt; and, an "ecolodge" on a natural reserve in the Amazon rain forest.

Title: Paul Martin's Britain

Author: Paul Martin

Publisher: Sutton

Price: £16.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Travel Guide

Category: Travel Writing

Paul Martin, presenter of the popular BBC2 "Flog It" series, has had the privilege of being allowed exceptional access to almost every town and city, where he has unlocked doors to reveal fascinating and unusual people, magnificent collections - many being seen in public for the first time - and quirky places. Paul's refreshingly informed perspective means it takes us beyond the tourist trail. At Highclere Castle, he didn't head straight for the Egyptian pyramid relics that have haunted the Caernarvon Earls but instead uncovered a beautiful wooden writing desk that had huge significance in European history and now lay ignored in the corner of a seldom-visited library. Recent discoveries have also included a brutal mouth harness designed to hold the tongues of gossiping Scots women; beautiful pewter bowls washed ashore from a shipwreck off the Scilly Isles, and a bizarre collection of commercial bakelite products including an indestructable coffin.

Title: My First Summer in the Sierra

Author: John Muir

Publisher: Canongate

Price: £6.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Travel Guide

Category: Travel Writing

The name John Muir has come to stand for the protection of wild land and wilderness in both America and Britain. Born in Dunbar in 1838, Muir is famed as a pioneer of American conservation and his passion, discipline and vision still inspire. Combining acute observation with a sense of inner discovery, Muir's writings of his summer in what would become the great national park of Yosemite in California's Sierra valley raise a close awareness of nature to a spiritual dimension. His journal provides a unique marriage of natural history, lyrical prose and amusing anecdote, retaining a freshness, intensity and brutal honesty which will amaze the modern reader.

Title: Japan: Through the Looking Glass

Author: Alan Macfarlane

Publisher: Profile

Price: £16.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Travel Guide

Category: Travel Writing

"In many ways I was like Alice," writes Alan Macfarlane on his first encounter with Japan, "that very assured and middle-class English girl, when she walked through the looking glass. I was full of certainty, confidence and unexamined assumptions about my categories. In this fascinating and endlessly surprising book he takes us with him on an exploration of every aspect of Japanese society from the most public to the most intimate.

Title: Back to the Badlands

Author: John Williams

Publisher: Serpents Tail

Price: £8.99

Bookshop: Amazon

Spartacus Website: Travel Guide

Category: Travel Writing

In the summer of 1989, John Williams donned a baseball cap and took off for the States to search out the mythical America of modern crime fiction - to find James Ellroy's LA, Elmore Leonard's sleazy South Beach of Miami, Sara Paretsky's Chicago, and many others on an unnerving tour of the American underbelly. The result was "Into the Badlands", a riveting collection of interviews that introduced a generation of crime fans to now legendary writers. In 2005, Williams returned to discover that much had changed in the intervening years, both in crime writing and in America as a whole. As Williams crosses America in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he finds himself in a profoundly uneasy country. Whether their territory is inner-city DC, like George Pelecanos, or the rural white poverty of the Ozark Hills, like Daniel Woodrell, the best crime writers today are sending despatches from the edge. John Williams brings their visions together to construct a powerful, personal portrait of America today. This book also contains interviews with James Lee Burke, James Ellroy, James Crumley, Sara Paretsky, Eugene Izzi, Elmore Leonard, George V. Higgins, Vicki Hendricks, Kem Nunn, Kinky Friedman, Daniel Woodrell, and George P. Pelecanos.

Educational Websites

Standards Site, BBC History, PBS Online, Open Directory Project, Virtual Library,
Education Forum, History GCSE, Design & Technology, Learn History, Music Teacher Resource,
Freepedia, Teach It, Science Active, Geography IST, Brighton Photographers, Sussex Photo History,
Compton History, Universal Teacher, English Teaching, English Online, History Learning Site,
History on the Net, Black History, Greenfield History, School History, HistoryWorld, I Love History,
E-HELP, Ed Podesta Blog, Macgregorish History, Historiasiglo20, Sintermeerten, ICT4LT

News and Search

Guardian Unlimited, Times Online, Daily Telegraph, The Independent, New York Times,
Washington Post, BBC, CNN, Yahoo News, New Scientist, Google News, Channel 4, ZDNet,
Google, Excite, Yahoo, MSN, Lycos, AOL Search, Hotbot, Metacrawler, Netscape, Ask, Search,
Go, Looksmart, Dogpile, Raging Search, All the Web, Kartoo, Search Engine Watch, About