By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
In Nigeria – Michael Palin visited Nigeria with a film crew to make a three-part TV series released in early 2024, so just before I was in Nigeria. And now – two years later? – there’s a rather brief, rather badly designed (in my view) and rather disappointing book on his travels. He does get to places I was not able to visit – Port Harcourt in particular – but then he has a film crew, an armed escort and 34 bags to tote around.
Well I did have MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières) looking after me although I only had a carry-on bag to worry about. And I got to a number of places in the north of the country he was not able to visit. Apart from my MSF travels I also – like Michael Palin – visited Lagos (Nigeria’s mega city). Abuja (the capital) and Kano (which would probably be the tourist capital, if Nigeria had any tourists).
Ambivalence – a review in The Financial Times on 30 May 2026 seduced me into reading Brian Dillon’s book, without I hasten to add, a great deal of understanding or appreciation. Well he points out that he could not relate to someone who did not appreciate Jacques Derrida, guru of the philosophy of deconstruction. And there’s also a hint of satisfaction – dare I say smug satisfaction – that he’d scored a mention in Private Eye’s Pseuds Corner. His writing – and there’s lots of it – seems perfectly intended for Pseuds Corner.
The Brian Dillon biography from Fitzcarraldo, his publisher, reports that he ‘was born in Dublin in 1969. His books include Ambivalence, Affinities, Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror: Essays, I Am Sitting in a Room, Sanctuary, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, London Review of Books, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Frieze and Artforum. He has curated exhibitions for Tate and Hayward galleries. He lives in London.’
And then for something completely different I read two books by Judy Blume. With close to 100 million books sold she’s clearly an enormously popular author as a recent review on 23 April 2026 in The Economist of Judy Blume: A Life by Mark Oppenheimer underlined. Now I am clearly not in the Judy Blume catchment zone – girls and young women – but it’s always interesting finding out about people who you shouldn’t, according to some people, be reading and in 2025 ‘Forever … was still one of the most banned books in America’s public schools.’ So I read Forever even though a school district in Iowa worried that it described things ‘God didn’t intend to explore outside of marriage.’ Her earlier book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret – target audience, 11-year-old girls – also upset lots of people. Not only did it study the sort of things that 11-year-old girls worry about, but Margaret had a Jewish father and a Christian mother who had wisely decided she should make her own decisions about religion.
In Nigeria – Michael Palin visited Nigeria with a film crew to make a three-part TV series released in early 2024, so just before I was in Nigeria. And now – two years later? – there’s a rather brief, rather badly designed (in my view) and rather disappointing book on...
I’ve certainly been hitting the islands this year – Christmas Island and Cocos Keeling, out in the Indian Ocean off Australia and Indonesia. Then a brief stop and a walk on Sharp Island in Hong Kong, on a stopover between Australia and the UK. A visit to the wonderful...
In Part 1 of my Greenland travels I arrived in the capital Nuuk, it’s only a two hour flight from Iceland, and continued north across the Arctic Circle to Ilulissat, the iceberg tourist centre of Greenland. Then I returned to Nuuk and continued south to Qaqortoq, the ...
▲ Yes dozy Don, also known as Taco Trump, the shambolic President of the USA does have bad intentions for Greenland. I posted a blog in January about why it might be a good idea to visit Greenland now, before the US invades. In June I finally got there and visited fou...
The wildlife is often a big part of the travel experience. This year I’ve had black tip and white tip reef sharks when I’ve been snorkelling and scuba diving at Christmas and Cocos Keeling Islands, plus a very nice manta ray encounter. Birds have been a big part of ...
▲ Approaching Athens Airport over Lemos – with my Greek Islands travel companion Nick Varian I’d flown into Athens and took a taxi to Piraeus ▲ Ferry activity in the port of Piraeus from the Hotel Mitsis N'U It’s the port for Athens and for most visitors that’s ...
◄ Having been to the Orkney Islands and definitely liked that strange collection of windy Scottish outposts I read two Orkney books. I really enjoyed Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun – Orkney girl abandons dull island life, moves to London, gets into partying, clubbing and a...
I’m clearly on an island roll. First I was out in the Indian Ocean from Australia at Christmas Island and then the Cocos Keeling Islands. That was followed by a short visit to Hong Kong and a walk on Sharp Island. Next I travelled by train and ferry to the Orkney Isla...
Part 1 covered Mainland, the largest island of the Orkney group with the ‘capital’ Kirkwall and the arrival point for many visitors Stromness. Plus the islands of Lamb Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay, linked to Mainland by the causeways across the Churchill Barriers,...
I’ve been meaning to go there for years and finally arrived on the scatter of islands just north of the northern tip of Scotland. Which is not John o’Groats, although that’s often looked upon as where Scotland ends, the other end of the country from Land’s End, 1407km...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013