Description

The Independent Best Book for Walkers 2022
Where can a walk take you?
It goes without saying, walking can connect us to our surroundings and free us from our worries. It can raise our heart rate and relax our minds. It can lead us across historic ground and inspire new thinking.

In this beautiful collection, twenty outstanding writers set out with old memories and new adventures. ‘I’ve always hated walking,’ Harland Miller offers as his precis, while Ingrid Persaud and Agnes Poirier consider the rituals of pilgrimage and protest march. ‘It isn’t a walking city,’ Kamila Shamsie writes of Karachi, though she strides across it regardless. On the shores of Foulness Island, Will Self hopes to avoid landmines. In a forest north of Berlin, Jessica J. Lee gets soaked, then lost. And pacing around Delhi, Keshava Guha is interrupted by a husky. ‘During the pandemic of 2020,’ he writes, looking back. ‘He was the only thing I hugged.’

These are stories to dip into, from all walks of life. Together they capture the magic and opportunity that can arrive when you put one foot in front of the other.

This collection features Tim Parks, Kamila Shamsie, Will Self, Nicholas Shakespeare, Irenosen Okojie, Ingrid Persaud, AL Kennedy, Cynan Jones, Sally Bayley, Joanna Kavenna, Kathleen Rooney, Richard Ford, Harland Miller, Keshava Guha, Agnes Poirier, Josephine Rowe, Sinead Gleeson, Pico Iyer, Patrick Gale and Jessica J. Lee.

Publisher Review

Praise for Duncan Minshull's previous collections 'A high-class tasting menu, sometimes deliciously incongruous but always organised with intelligent care ... It is hard to think that it could be better done' Times Literary Supplement '[The book is] full of those free-associations in place and space that are the very essence of walking pursued as a writerly act ... The perfect companion for a summer ramble, or a winter fireside' Will Self 'A book to start your heart and feet beating for the road' The Times 'This elegant little book would be an excellent Christmas present' Country Life