Gent – no it’s not Bruges
2 August 2023 | Places
◄ Atlas & Zanzibar Bookshop – Come to Gent and speak for the Atlas & Zanzibar Bookshop Frank van Os suggested. Quite why Gent would have the best travel bookshop in Belgium I have no idea, but it looked like an interesting town so I didn’t need much persuadi...
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The Amandine – a Belgian Trawler
17 December 2012 | Places
My recent visit to Belgium was in pursuit of King Leopold II’s Belgian Congo connections in Brussels and Ostend. I was only a few steps out of the Ostend train station when I came upon the Amandine, the last Ostend fishing trawler to operate in Icelandic waters. L...
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Enclaves & Exclaves – Belgium/Netherlands
8 December 2012 | Places
Last year I blogged about visiting the National Library in Canberra, Australia and finding out about enclaves and exclaves along the borders between India and Bangladesh and between Belgium and the Netherlands. While I was in Belgium continuing my pursuit of King Le...
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Radio Congo
23 August 2012 | Media
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)...
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Assorted Books & Films
24 November 2011 | Media
I don’t just read travel books – although three recent novels also travelled through their pages. I really liked Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011. Following the inter-connected lives of rock mogul Bennie Sala...
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