Overview

*** A FINANCIAL TIMES BEST SUMMER TRAVEL BOOK OF 2024 *** “Excellent…immensely well-researched and playful. Smith has written something special.” -- Patrick Galbraith, The Times ""Imaginative and engaging"" -- Country Life Acclaimed travel writer Oliver Smith sets out to radically reframe our idea of ‘pilgrimage’ in Britain by retracing sacred travel made across time, from murmurs of ritual journeys in the depths of Ice Age to new pilgrimages of the 21st century. He embarks on an epic adventure across sacred British landscapes – climbing into remote sea caves, sleeping inside Neolithic tombs, scaling forgotten holy mountains and once marooning himself at sea. Following holy roads to churches, cathedrals and standing stones, this evocative and enlightening travelogue explores places prehistoric, pagan and Christian, but also reveals how football stadiums and music festivals have become contemporary places of pilgrimage. The routes walked are often ancient, the pilgrims he meets are always modern. But underpinning the book is a timeless truth: that making journeys has always been a way of making meaning. So often, Oliver finds, “the unravelling of a path goes in tandem with the unravelling of the soul.”

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9781399409032

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Smith is one of the best and most thoughtful travel writers working today. I loved this sensitive, astute, and delicately written account of his journeys to these most sacred places— standing stones and holy islands, crypt-like caves and sports stadia—disparate sites united by their profound effects upon the human psyche. Pilgrimage speaks to something soft and raw and yearning inside all of us, something powerful that goes so often unspoken. Smith bottles it on the page. -- Cal Flyn, author of 'Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape'

Smith is one of the best and most thoughtful travel writers working today. I loved this sensitive, astute, and delicately written account of his journeys to these most sacred places— standing stones and holy islands, crypt-like caves and sports stadia—disparate sites united by their profound effects upon the human psyche. Pilgrimage speaks to something soft and raw and yearning inside all of us, something powerful that goes so often unspoken. Smith bottles it on the page. -- Cal Flyn, author of 'Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape' A wonderfully original and engaging exploration of pilgrimage in modern Britain – with all its diversity of motivation and eccentricity of character. Oliver Smith trips lightly along pilgrims’ ways both old and new, with a sharp eye and an open mind. -- Tim Hannigan, author of 'The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey' Warm and wise - a thoughtful, hands-on exploration of Britain's most magical places, and the people who come to pay homage. -- Tim Moore, author of 'Vuelta Skelter: Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain'

Author Information

Oliver Smith is an acclaimed travel writer working mostly for the Financial Times, The Times and Outside Magazine in the USA. For 10 years he worked for Lonely Planet Magazine. During his time there he won Travel Writer of the Year at the Travel Media Awards, was AITO Travel Writer of the Year on three occasions, and was nominated for PPA Writer of the Year.

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