Jonathan Raban

Eothen, which means 'news from the east', started out as a few notes scribbled on the back of a map, to amuse a friend who wanted some advice for his own youthful 'year off' travels, but it became one of the most influential, witty and idiosyncratic of travel books. It took Kinglake seven years before he had finished crafting this...

Jonathan Raban's enthralling journey into the history of the Great Plains of Montana - the least populated, most uncharted region of the United States - uncovers the heart and soul of the country. Bringing to life the extraordinary landscape of the prairie and the homesteaders whose dreams foundered there, and reaching through history to the present day, Bad Land uncovers...

A beautiful, compelling memoir . . . This, Raban's final work, is a gorgeous achievement - Ian McEwan On 11 June 2011, three days short of his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban suffered a stroke which left him unable to use the right side of his body. Learning to use a wheelchair in a rehab facility outside Seattle and resisting the...

Father and Son is a beautiful, compelling memoir. It presents an exquisite, sometimes lunatic tension between powerful emotions and carnage on one side, and on the other, the conventional codes of what must remain unsaid. This, Raban's final work, is a gorgeous achievement. - Ian McEwan On 11 June 2011, three days short of his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban suffered...

A valuable book and a necessary one. One of the funniest and cleverest voyages on record. — Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman The finest writer afloat since Conrad. — Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Guardian Unfailingly witty and entertaining. — Salman Rushdie Coasting around Britain single-handed in an antique two-masted sailing boat, Jonathan Raban conducts a masterly exploration of England and the English...

Jonathan Raban is the only person I listen to in matters of travel and books and writing in general. Reading him, talking to him as I have over fifty years, he has made my work better and me happier. - Paul Theroux For Love and Money is as good a book as there is about the writing life. Delighted that...

Of all his generation's travellers, Jonathan Raban is the most sophisticated, writing with a subtle and imaginative brilliance. — Colin Thubron One of the most humane and visionary of all travel writers. — Jeremy Seal Into Jonathan Raban's familiar Earls Court neighbourhood after the 1970s oil boom came new visitors from the Arab world, dressed in floor-length robes and yashmaks....

Jonathan Raban is one of the world's greatest living travel writers. – William Dalrymple The best book of travel ever written by an Englishman about the United States. – Jan Morris, Independent Navigating the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans, Raban opens himself to experience the river in all her turbulent and unpredictable old glory. Going wherever the current...