logo
episode-header-image
May 2024
26m 28s

Women writing about travel

Bbc World Service
About this episode

A British explorer who transformed travel and travel writing and a Nigerian novelist and travel blogger talk to Ella Al-Shamahi about their adventures around the world.

Hilary Bradt co-founded the world's largest independently owned guidebook publisher fifty years ago. She’s been inspiring travellers to go off the beaten track ever since, publishing guides to destinations where no guidebook previously existed, like Uganda, Yugoslavia, North Korea, Eritrea and Madagascar.

Lola Akinmade Åkerström is a Nigerian travel storyteller, photographer, speaker and an international author whose books are published in 18 languages. She lives in Sweden, teaches travel writing and is the current editor-in-chief for Slow Travel Stockholm.

Produced by Jane Thurlow

(Image: (L) Lola Akinmade Åkerström, credit Jessica Wikström. (R) Hilary Bradt, credit Alex Graeme.)

Up next
Jul 7
Medics in remote communities
Two doctors from South Africa and Australia tell Ella Al-Shamahi about rewards of working in rural communities and the challenges of being hundreds of miles from the nearest large hospital.Dr Melanie Matthews runs a medical centre in Maningrida, about 500km east of Darwin. She’s ... Show More
26m 28s
Jun 30
Pastry queens
An Indian chef who opened a patisserie in Jaipur and a Syrian chef with two pastry shops in the heart of Paris tell Datshiane Navanayagam about adding new layers to French classics.After training at le Cordon Bleu school in Paris Tejasvi Chandela returned to her hometown of Jaipu ... Show More
26m 28s
Jun 23
Women in glass
Two women from Hungary and the UK talk to Datshiane Navanayagam about the intensity, skill and resilience required for modern glassmaking. Mira Davida is a Hungarian glass artist based in Stockholm, Sweden. She specialises in flameworking, a technique that uses a high-temperature ... Show More
26m 30s
Recommended Episodes
Jan 2024
Women of Science Fiction: Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929 - 2018) was an American author who wrote works of speculative fiction, science fiction, and fantasy. Her literary career spanned nearly 60 years and resulted in more than 20 novels, over 100 short stories, poetry, literary criticism, and childrens books.  ... Show More
7m 26s
Oct 2022
Ep 5 - Narrating the Middle East
Can we understand a culture and a region when we don’t read its authors? And what nuances do we miss when we read them in translation? How are authors and poets from the Middle East reaching new audiences? I speak to poet Zeina Hashem Beck, from Lebanon, living in California, abo ... Show More
40m 28s
Oct 2021
Author Nadia Wassef on Life as a Cairo Bookseller
“Bookstores typically have been a place where I escape myself—and [a place where] I find a new self,” says this week's podcast guest, Nadia Wassef. “I feel like I walk in there and the world is open to me.” The author of the newly released Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookse ... Show More
24m 19s
Aug 2022
Lady Mary Wroth - women writer to put back on the bookshelf
Author of the first prose romance published in England in 1621, her reputation at court was ruined by her thinly veiled autobiographical writing. Visit the family home, Penshurst Place in Kent, and you can see Lady Mary Wroth's portrait, but New Generation Thinker Nandini Das say ... Show More
14m 30s
Nov 2022
What We Learn About Ourselves When We Travel Solo
Solo travel is lauded as one of the most exciting ways to see the world—and for good reason. It's adventurous, eye-opening, unpredictable, transformative. But it can also be challenging and, at some points, a little lonely, even for the most experienced of travelers. Lale chats w ... Show More
26m 52s
Jan 2018
Christina Lamb
Christina Lamb is chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times and travels the world reporting from war zones and hot spots, speaking not just to key protagonists but also seeking out and detailing the daily impact of conflict on civilians.An only child, and brought up in Car ... Show More
35m 9s
Apr 2020
Women of the World
Kim Chakanetsa for an hour of conversation with the acclaimed authors Isabel Allende and Edna O’Brien. Isabel talks about finding love in her 70s and how she is coping with isolation and Covid-19. Edna, now 89, talks about her latest Novel, Girl, which took her to Nigeria - and s ... Show More
50m 6s
Nov 2023
World Tour for Climate Change: Hitchhiking, Biking, and Low-Carbon Travel With Megan Routbort
Megan Routbort is one half of a French-American duo on a mission to tell stories of optimism about the people working to find solutions against climate change. At the time of this recording, they’re six months into their three-year voyage, visiting "climate hotspots" and explorin ... Show More
1 h
Jan 2022
Written in the Stars
How far would you go for love...literally how far would you travel? Would you cross mountains, borders, continents? Today's love story is about one man who bicycled thousands of miles across foreign lands just to be reunited with the woman he loved. The year was 1975. Charlotte, ... Show More
42m 2s