Bøker av Travis Elborough

Atlas of Improbable Places shows the modern world from surprising new vantage points that will inspire urban explorers and armchair travellers alike to consider a new way of understanding the world we live in.

In Artists' Journeys that Shaped Our World, follow in the footsteps of some of the world’s most famous painters, and the journeys which inspired some of their greatest works.

In 45 unique maps and with evocative photography, Atlas of Unexpected Places is a journey to far-off lands, obscure discoveries and unimaginable locations.

In the Artist's Journey, follow in the footsteps of some of the world's most famous painters, and the journeys which inspired some of their greatest works.

For nearly 60 years, since the arrival of the long-playing record in 1948, the album has provided the soundtrack to our lives. Our record collections, even if they're on CD, or these days, an iPod, are personal treasure, revealing our loves, errors of jugdement and lapses in taste. Self-confessed music obsessive, Travis Elborough, explores the way in which particular albums are deeply embedded in cultural history, revered as works of art or so ubiqitous as to be almost invisible. But in the age of the iPod, when we can download an infinite number of single tracks and need never listen to a whole album ever again, does the concept of an album still mean anything? THE LONG-PLAYER GOODBYE is a brilliant piece of popular history and a celebration of the joy of records. If you've ever had a favourite album, you'll love Travis Elborough's warm and witty take on how vinyl changed our world.

Parks are such a familiar part of everyday life, you might be forgiven for thinking they have always been there. In fact, public parks are an invention.The author excavates the history of parks in all their colour and complexity. It is a celebration of a small wonder that - in an age of swingeing cuts - we should not take for granted.

Parks are such a familiar part of everyday life. You might be forgiven for thinking they have always been there - and that they always will. This is a story with trips into the lives of celebrated engineers and artists, and the occasional hop across the Atlantic and the Channel.

In 1968 the world's largest antique went to America. But how do you transport a 130-year-old bridge 3,000 miles? And why did Robert P McCulloch, a multimillionaire oil baron and chainsaw-manufacturing king, buy it? Why did he ship it to a waterless patch of the Arizonan desert? Did he even get the right bridge?

The seaside, like football and the railways, is a distinctly English and largely nineteenth century invention. At the Festival of Britain in 1951, a replica of a seafront represented hope and modernity - once the preserve of the sickly elite, the seaside had become one of the great English egalitarian institutions. But when the advent of cheap flights allowed us to go and see how the rest of the world did it - with better weather and sandier beaches - our boarding houses and bandstands slowly rotted away. As the economy forced a reassessment of our holidaying habits, resorts from Morecambe to Bournemouth enjoyed a renaissance. Capitalising on the uniquely English combination of irony and pride, the English Riviera has been reborn. In many ways, our national character has been defined by our relationship with the seaside - and in tracing its development, we can see how our ideas about health, welath and happiness evolved. Our aspirations and snobbery, our attitudes to sex, our keen sense of fair play, our chequered relationship with national pride and our ability to laugh at ourselves have all been played out against a backdrop of stormy skies, pebbly beaches and sticks of rock. The seaside is the place we go to get better, to let our hair down, to downsize, to retire, to take drugs and to hide. Ranging from Agatha Christie to the Prince Regent via Billy Butlin and Brighton Rock, Travis Elborough explores how a coastline peppered with quasi-Oriental piers makes us quintessentially English. Erudite, charming and surprising, Wish You Were Here is a gloriously unorthodox social history of a nation of islanders.

'A charming account of the capital's enduring affair with its favourite piece of transport' Daily Mail