Extreme Rambling

'Good fences make good neighbours, but what about bad ones?' The Israeli separation barrier is probably the most iconic divider of land since the Berlin Wall. It has been declared illegal under international law and its impact on life in the West Bank has been enormous. Mark Thomas - as only he could - decided the only way to really get to grips with this huge divide was to use the barrier as a route map, to 'walk the wall', covering the entire distance with little more in his armoury than Kendal Mint Cake and a box of blister plasters. In the course of his ramble he was tear-gassed, stoned, sunburned, rained on and hailed on and even lost the wall a couple of times. But thankfully he was also welcomed and looked after by Israelis and Palestinians - from farmers and soldiers to smugglers and zookeepers - and finally earned a unique insight of the real Middle East in all its entrenched and yet life-affirming glory. And all without hardly ever getting arrested!

The Israeli security wall is going to be some 700 miles long when completed and will surround most of the West Bank. Seen by some as a cynical land grab and others as an apartheid barrier, opinions on it are hugely divided. But who are the people who live in the shadow of this wall and how does it affect their lives? Mark Thomas decides to combine his two great loves, walking and talking, and travel the length of the wall in an attempt to understand a bit more about the conflict and its effect on everyday people.

2017 marked three important anniversaries for the Palestinian people: 100 years since the Balfour Declaration; 50 years since the Six-day War; and ten years since the Blockade of Gaza. As an act of penance, solidarity and hope, actor and musician Justin Butcher - along with ten other companions for the full route, plus another hundred joining him for various stretches along the way - walked from London to Jerusalem. This book is the record of his journey: a combination of walking journal, travel writing and pilgrim stories. It's less of a travel guide to walking across Europe and more an exploration of the many strands radiating from the Holy Land and its narrative, weaving paths across place and history, through the lives of Justin's fellow-walkers - and, of course, his own life. Between the route itinerary and the themes of Balfour and Christian Zionism, Weizmann and cordite, colonialism, Jerusalem Syndrome and Desert spirituality, Justin charts a chronicle of serendipity: happenstances hilarious, infuriating and occasionally numinous - or, as pilgrims might say, encounters with the Divine.

Keywords for Travel Writing Studies draws on the notion of the ‘keyword’ as initially elaborated by Raymond Williams in his seminal 1976 text Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society to present 100 concepts central to the study of travel writing as a literary form. Each entry in the volume is around 1,000 words, the style more essayistic than encyclopaedic, with contributors reflecting on their chosen keyword from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The emphasis on travelogues and other cultural representations of mobility drawn from a range of national and linguistic traditions ensures that the volume has a comparative dimension; the aim is to give an overview of each term in its historical and theoretical complexity, providing readers with a clear sense of how the selected words are essential to a critical understanding of travel writing. Each entry is complemented by an annotated bibliography of five essential items suggesting further reading.

Broadly this book is about the Arabian desert as the locus of exploration by a long tradition of British travellers that includes T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger; more specifically, it is about those who, since 1950, have followed in their literary footsteps. In analysing modern works covering a land greater than the sum of its geographical parts, the discussion identifies outmoded tropes that continue to impinge upon the perception of the Middle East today while recognising that the laboured binaries of “East and West”, “desert and sown”, “noble and savage” have outrun their course. Where, however, only a barren legacy of latent Orientalism may have been expected, the author finds instead a rich seam of writing that exhibits diversity of purpose and insight contributing to contemporary discussions on travel and tourism, intercultural representation, and environmental awareness. By addressing a lack of scholarly attention towards recent additions to the genre, this study illustrates for the benefit of students of travel literature, or indeed anyone interested in “Arabia”, how desert writing, under the emerging configurations of globalisation, postcolonialism, and ecocriticism, acts as a microcosm of the kinds of ethical and emotional dilemmas confronting today’s travel writers in the world’s most extreme regions.

More than sixty years since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights first enshrined the right to freedom of movement in an international charter of human rights, the issue of mobility and the right to tourism itself have become increasingly significant areas of scholarly interest and political debate. However, despite the fact that cross-border travel implies certain citizenship rights as well as the material capacity to travel, the manifold intersections between tourism and citizenship have not received the attention they deserve in the literature. This book endeavours to fill this gap by being the first to fully examine the role of tourism in wider society through a critically-informed sociological reflection on the unfolding relationships between international tourism and distinct renderings of citizenship, with particular emphasis on the ideological and political alignments between the freedom of movement and the right to travel. The text weaves its analysis of citizenship and travel in the context of addressing large-scale societal transformations engendered by globalization, neoliberalism and the geopolitical realignments between states, as well as comprehending the internal reconfiguring of the relationship between citizens and states themselves. By doing so, it focuses on key themes including: tourism and social citizenship rights; race, culture and minority rights; states, markets and the freedom of movement; tourism, peace and geo-politics; consumerism and class; and, ethical tourism, global citizenship and cosmopolitanism. The book concludes that the advancement of genuinely democratic and just forms of tourism must be commensurate with demands for distributive justice and a democratic politics of mobility encompassing all of humanity. This timely and significant contribution to the sociology and politics of international tourism through the lens of citizenship is a must read for students and scholars in both in the fields of tourism and social science. The royalties received from this book will be donated to the International Porter Protection Group.

“A moving account of the dispossessed children of Palestine, and the transformative power that music has had in giving them meaning and reason for hope.”-Reza Aslan “Moving ... Tolan is a scrupulous craftsman.” - Los Angeles Times It is an unlikely story. Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan, a child from a Palestinian refugee camp, confronts an occupying army, gets an education, masters an instrument, dreams of something much bigger than himself, and then, through his charisma and persistence, inspires others to work with him to make that dream real. The dream: a school to transform the lives of thousands of children--as Ramzi's life was transformed--through music. Musicians from all over the world came to help. A violist left the London Symphony Orchestra, in part to work with Ramzi at his new school. Daniel Barenboim, the eminent Israeli conductor, invited Ramzi to join his West Eastern Divan Orchestra, which he founded with the late Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. Since then the two have played together frequently. Children of the Stone chronicles Ramzi's journey--from stone thrower to music student to school founder--and shows how through his love of music he created something lasting and beautiful in a land torn by violence and war. This is a story about the power of music, but also about freedom and conflict, determination and vision. It's a vivid portrait of life amid checkpoints and military occupation, a growing movement of nonviolent resistance, the prospects of musical collaboration across the Israeli-Palestinian divide, and the potential of music to help children everywhere see new possibilities for their lives.

Narratives of the modern history of Palestine/Israel often begin with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and Britain's arrival in 1917. However, this work argues that the contest over Palestine has its roots deep in the 19th century, with Victorians who first cast the Holy Land as an area to be possessed by empire, then began to devise schemes for its settler colonization. The product of historical research among almost forgotten guidebooks, archives and newspaper clippings, this book presents a previously unwritten chapter of Britain's colonial desire, and reveals how indigenous Palestinians began to react against, or accommodate themselves to, the West's fascination with their ancestral land. From the travellers who tried to overturn Jerusalem's holiest sites, to an uprising sparked by a church bell and a missionary's tragic actions, to one Palestinian's eventful visit to the heart of the British Empire, Palestine in the Victorian Age reveals how the events of the nineteenth century have cast a long shadow over the politics of Palestine/Israel ever since.