Peter Whitfield’s new book, Travel: a Literary History, tours the historical motives for travel and travel writing – religion, conquest, gold, glory, adventure, aesthetics, science, sex, hedonism, poetry and wisdom – but shows how these overt motives have almost always been accompanied by that of self discovery – the discovery of the foreignness within ourselves. 

Peter Whitfield is the author of more than a dozen works of history, literary criticism and poetry, including A Universe of Books: Readings in World Literature, and English Poetry: a New Illustrated History.