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.
I’ve recorded several podcasts, interviews, conversations recently.
At London Business School Maureen and I recorded Journeys, a conversation with Rajesh Chandy the Professor of Entrepreneurship in the Developing World at the Wheeler Institute. People seemed to enjoy it, someone suggested that we ‘looked like two teenagers our to start an exciting adventure,’ not business like at all.
With Tyrel Cameron Eskelson I talked on his Interlocutor podcast about my travel life, starting in Pakistan when I was a small child right up to travel in recent weeks and for the rest of 2025.
I chaired the 2012 Dolman Travel Book of the Year awards, deciding on the best travel book published in Britain last year. I’ve posted blogs about the awards and, as I worked my way through the entrants and the long list and then the short list my thoughts on the book...
What is it about the Congo which inspires such great writing? Whether it’s powerful novels (from Heart of Darkness via A Bend in the River to Poisonwood Bible), shocking history (King Leopold’s Ghost to In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz or Dancing in the Glory of Monsters)...
At the Olympic Games opening in London (I was there) I commented that some of the crowd participation was remarkably like a mass games in Pyongyang, North Korea, except there were no killer dictators involved and we hadn’t rehearsed. I’ve been to mass games in Pyon...
I’m chairing the 2012 Dolman Travel Book of the Year award this year, deciding on the best travel book published in Britain last year. I’ve posted blogs about the awards and, as I worked my way through the entrants and the long list my thoughts on the books entered. C...
Love them and hate them – I’ve listed LAX (Los Angeles International) and CDG (Paris Charles de Gaulle) as my least favourite airports in the first world. On the other hand LHR (London Heathrow), SIN (Singapore Changi) and MEL (Melbourne Tullamarine) are all OK by me ...
It’s my final batch of books from the long list for the Dolman Travel Book of the Year Award. I’m chairing the panel of judges and we’ll pick the winner at Hatchards Bookshop on Piccadilly in London on 5 September. Click here for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th batches...
◄ Maureen and I were at the Olympic opening in London on Friday night. Here we are with Simon Calder, travel editor at the Independent newspaper. The opening – fantastic – a wonderful, exciting, dramatic evening full of high spots. We all loved the Queen ‘parachuti...
I dropped into my local Boots (a major British pharmacy chain) the other day to get some portrait photographs for visa applications. For an extra £2 the machine would dispense not just ordinary old photographs you could use anywhere, but photographs which were speci...
◄ North-west of London and just beyond Oxford the town of Burford is regularly cited as one of the prettiest in England. Of course it’s well equipped with pubs, like any pretty English village or town, although it’s unclear why there should be a mermaid pub so far...
This is my 5th, and almost final, batch of Dolman Award books, we’re working our way towards the ‘short list’ from which we’ll pick the winner at Hatchards Bookshop on Piccadilly in London on 5 September. Click here for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th batches of books. W...
© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013