hidden europe 68

Winter reading

by Nicky Gardner

Summary

Discover three fine books for winter reading. We delve into the first English-language biography of Joseph Roth, find Iain’s Bamforth new collection of essays is full of zest and follow Vitali Vitaliev on a romp across and along some of the world’s most curious borders.

We have never carried book reviews as such in hidden europe. More accurately, we should say that insofar as we have carried book reviews at all, those reviews have generally been of titles published long before any of us were born. There’s still a lot of mileage in 19th-century Baedeker guides, as we showed in issue 62 of the magazine when we carried a very detailed review of two guidebooks to Switzerland, published respectively in 1881 and 1905.

Yet it will be no surprise to readers to hear that a feast of interesting books cross our desks between each issue of the magazine. Hot off the press is Vitali Vitaliev’s Atlas of Geographical Curiosities (published by Jonglez in October 2022, 244pp). It’s a brilliant romp through oddball fragments of political geography around the world, of which about three dozen are in Europe. These are almost without exception places we have covered in the pages of hidden europe over the years, but what’s so engaging about Vitali’s book is that these, with dozens of examples from other continents, are brought together in one place. From the Caprivi Strip to the Saimaa Canal, from the Saatse Boot to Guantanamo Bay, this is the ultimate guide to exclaves, enclaves and curious borders.

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Admiralty Handbooks: Baedekers with a Twist

Some of the best academic minds in Britain spent the Second World War writing guidebooks about far-flung places. We explore a clandestine area of professional geographical endeavour which resulted in the Naval Intelligence Guides – often called the Admiralty Handbooks.

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Changing Fortunes: Guidebooks and War

It's hard to imagine these days that any guidebook might ever sell 100,000 copies each month. But 100 years ago, in the second half of 1919, Michelin was managing just that. We explore how guidebooks fared in the years after the end of the First World War. As Baedeker fell into disfavour among English readers, other companies were quick to fill the gap.

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Viking voyages: Eirik Raudes Land

For a brief period in the early 1930s, the Norwegian flag fluttered over two remote settlements in eastern Greenland: Myggbukta and Antarctichavn. This is the story of Eirik Raudes Land (Erik the Red Land), an upstart territory named in honour of one of the Viking World's most celebrated mediaeval scoundrels.