[audio:https://www.phoenixfm.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/20120412120010-sylvia-kent-4th-edition.mp3|titles=20120412120010 sylvia kent 4th edition] Click here to listen to the interview.

Delighted as always to be joined in the studio by writer/journalist and long time supporter of Phoenix FM, Sylvia Kent. Check out Sylvia’s blog at https://www.sylviakent.blogspot.co.uk/ plus her books on amazon including her new book Brentwood: Historic Town

This month our guests in the studio are Brentwood writer/publisher Malcolm Burgess and writer Heather Reyes. Malcolm and Heather spoke about their acclaimed travel book series.

“We were on the hot slopes of the Acropolis and wanted to
read a selection (not too big) of writing about Athens. We didn’t want another
guide book. We wanted fresh, exciting writing that illuminated the city. There
wasn’t anything. Not in Athens, London or New York. So we – I’m ex-UK
HarperCollins – decided to create our own titles in 2009″.

The result is Oxygen Books’ innovative city-pick series
featuring some of the best-ever writing on favourite world cities. It’s already
been called ‘superb .. like having your own iPad loaded with different tomes’
(London Times), ‘wonderful’ (London Guardian) ‘sublime’ (The Sydney Morning
Herald) and praised for its ‘super-relevant destinations’ (Lonely Planet
Magazine)

Each paperback book includes over fifty writers, fiction
and non-fiction, past and especially present, including newly translated
writing. So far we’ve published titles on New York, Berlin, Paris, London,
Venice, Amsterdam and Dublin – St Petersburg, Istanbul and Jerusalem/ Tel
Aviv follow soon.

More details are on www.oxygenbooks.co.uk

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Sylvia also recommended The Last Travels of a Fat Bulldog by George Courtauld

Review

‘The final, brilliant collection of
dispatches from Her Majesty’s Mesenger George Courtauld is here. Recalled from
official retirement from the Foreign Office, he romps hilariously through the
remoter part os Asia, Africa and Latin America.’ TRAVELLER ‘Completely readable
… Almost every page has some passage that makes one want to laugh aloud. Witty
and entertaining’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ‘George Courtauld is an inveterate
sightseer and his account of his travels, totalling over a quarter of a million
miles a year, is lively and hilarious. It’s a thumping good read’ SUNDAY
TELEGRAPH ‘Up until his recent retirement, George Courtauld worked for the
Foreign Office as a Queen’s Messenger. If you’re not sure what that is, reading
this book will leave you none the wiser, for Courtauld–bound by the Official
Secrets Act–confines his subject matter to places and people. This adds an air
of mystery to the book, and leaves room for more of the Fat Bulldog’s tales.
Fans of Courtauld’s previous books The Travels of a Fat Bulldog and The Fat
Bulldog Roams Again will already know the drill, but will be sad to know that
this third instalment is to be the last. Reading this book is like reading
choice extracts from a most extraordinary diary. In Zambia, Courtauld is taken
out to “spot game” at one of the biggest national parks in the world. His host,
one Colonel Hawfinch, describes their guide as an “armed incompetent” and his
driver as “too stupid to understand my comments on his wretched driving”. This
is confirmed when the vehicle stalls before 200 charging buffalo and the guard
accidentally disconnects the headlamps. As entertaining as these anecdotes are,
what really brings them to life is the author’s brilliant use of language. The
South African wildebeest, for example, is described as “a ridiculous antelope
with a long face and a funny little pair of horns perched on the top of its head
like a girl’s sunglasses pushed up into her hair.’ – Darren King, Amazon.co.uk