Top 5 travel books – as chosen by Tristan Hughes

THE RINGS OF SATURN
WG Sebald
A walk along the eroding coast of East Anglia becomes the occasion for one of the great literary acts of mental journeying in this meandering masterpiece.

A FIELD GUIDE TO GETTING LOST
Rebecca Solnit

‘Never to get lost is not to live’ writes Solnit in this brilliant, eclectic collection of essays, which span from memoir to renaissance painting to mapmaking.

TRIESTE AND THE MEANING OF NOWHERE
Jan Morris

A loving and vivid portrait of Trieste, from its rise to wealth under the Hapsburgs through the Cold War to the present. Morris captures the special ‘nowhereness’ of the hallucinatory city.

RUNNING IN THE FAMILY
Michael Ondaatje

In his memoir based on a series of journeys to Sri Lanka in search of memories of his family, the Canadian poet and novelist beautifully conjures the country of his childhood in this mix of travel 
account, family history, poetry and fictional exploration.

IN PATAGONIA
Bruce Chatwin

From the childhood discovery of a piece of giant sloth skin in his grandmother’s cabinet of curiosities, Patagonia looms large for Chatwin as a place of oddities and wonders. This series of lyrical histories and sketches range from the Welsh settlements to
 Butch Cassidy.

Hummingbird by Tristan Hughes 
is out now (Parthian Books, £10)
. It was awarded the 2018 
Edward Stanford Travel 
Writing Award for ‘Fiction 
With a Sense of Place’.