Jennifer Barclay Books: Tales of Scrapes and Narrow Escapes

Paul Theroux spoke for many of us, I think, when he wrote that he liked reading of harrowing ordeals and life-threatening experiences; he said, 'I see Three Months in a Rubber Dinghy! and my hand leaps to the shelf.’ We all love reading the ‘what if?’ stories of things we hope will never happen to us.

So it's been amazing fun working on this upcoming Bradt book as project manager and editor. I've been dying to talk about it for months.

Michael Palin, Ben Fogle, Dervla Murphy and Tim Cahill are some of the celebrity contributors who feature alongside award-winning journalists and rising stars, sharing their true tales of sticky situations in The Irresponsible Traveller.

From being chased by a sea lion to being kidnapped in Brazil, caught in a hurricane in Cuba or arrested in Ethiopia, locked out of a car in Canada or horribly sick in the Himalayas, these are the scrapes they’ll never forget – whether entertaining, amusing or downright terrifying.

We’ve all got so collectively good at travelling, but it’s often those ‘uh-oh’ moments that make the best stories – those times when we don’t listen to advice or follow the rules or when we simply find ourselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Embarrassing or frightening, quite simply: mishaps make for memorable trips.

2014 is the 40^th anniversary of Bradt Travel Guides - who have built a reputation for publishing books covering the road less travelled - and this collection includes a hand-picked selection of contributors who’ve had special connections with Bradt over the years.

This is not the first project I've worked on with Bradt - last year I had the pleasure of editing two titles in their literature series, Catriona Rainsford's The Urban Circus and Tom Chesshyre's A Tourist in the Arab Spring - and I hope it won't be the last. The books are published in the US by Globe Pequot, and as foreign rights agent I'm always interested in hearing from international publishers interested in the literature or guidebook list.

A Tourist in the Arab Spring