Selected Writings 1990-2010

Access All Areas

A collection of Sara Wheeler's extraordinary and exhilarating travel writing

Sara Wheeler’s books include the international bestseller Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica, of which the Telegraph reviewer wrote, ‘I do not think there will ever be a better book on the Antarctic.’ The Magnetic North: Notes from the Arctic Circle, was chosen as Book of the Year by Will Self, Michael Palin, A. N. Wilson and others. She has published two biographies of travellers: Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard, and Too Close to the Sun: The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton, and was immensely relieved to write about women at last in O My America!. She lives in London.

In a series of remarkable books - Travels in a Thin Country, Terra Incognita, Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry Garrard, Too Close to the Sun and The Magnetic North - Sara Wheeler has shown that she is not only one of the finest travel writers of her generation but a very fine biographer too. Published to coincide with her fiftieth birthday, Access All Areas gathers together a selection of her shorter pieces, both journalism and introductions to other books. 
 
As one would expect, the frozen poles of the earth feature often, whether she is spending the night in Captain Scott's hut or reliving the adventures of Shackleton and Nansen. But its hot places feature too - Malawi, Kerala, Cuba and Bangladesh. She writes brilliantly of her heroes - Mary Kingsley, Fanny Trollope, Norman Lewis, Jan Morris and Sybille Bedford - and about the pains and pleasures of writing biography. Worried that having her children would end her roaming, she took her children with her, to the Arctic, and on a brilliantly depicted cruise on the QE2. She learns to bellydance, to strip, and to walk on the wing of a biplane at 3000 feet. 
 
This is an immensely varied and satisfying collection.

Second Acts in a New World

O My America!

Six extraordinary women, their renaissance in America, and the most dynamic period in US history.

One secret of first-person travel writing is the presence of the narrator as a good companion. It probably cannot be taught – a writer either is or is not sympathetic, amusing, insightful and informative. Sara Wheeler has had it from the off. You want to travel with her, and you want to travel blind.

Bracing and ebullient... This is a fresh and unforgettable picture of the country we have been steadily falling out of love with; a second act indeed.

Her  latest work, published just ahead of International Women's Day on  Friday, is perfect for women who want to shake a fist at the fading  light.

A curious and teasing book... Wheeler is a writer of great composure and energy, and out of these American adventures she fashions something unexpected and compelling, and that is a portrait of a nation under construction.

She [Wheeler] is terrific company, with a great eye for detail and a feisty voice... This deeply enjoyable book makes you see that the frontier is not what it once was, whether for women or America.

Sara Wheeler has always produced books that have proved game-changers, and she has done it again with O My America!

A book that is not quite biography or history or memoir of  the kind of travelogue for which this writer is justly praised but an oddly  successful hybrid of them all… Carefully observed and finely written.

Wheeler’s is a revealing, inspiring travel book that looks at the past and the present – and ends with a hopeful gaze on the future.

Wheeler declares that she had more fun writing this book that all the previous ones, and her pleasure at  being in such a place, and in such fascinating company, is contagious.

Wheeler  weaves her own experiences in with those of her subjects, writing, as  in all her earlier travel books and biographies, in a sharp, smart,  enjoyable style that combines objectivity with candour.

Wheeler writes with humour and knowledge in another fine book.

An emotional yet defiant account…  One becomes a willing, silent companion to these women, as Wheeler moves back and forth across centuries, to present a most amenable and worthy document.

The six historical portraits are as precise as clocks and each as compelling as the last… Wheeler is consistently deft at conveying both atmosphere and character.

Meticulously researched, hugely entertaining.

Sara Wheeler’s entertaining account of women who left these shores for the United States in the 19th Century.

A fresh, unforgettable portrait of a country with which we have been falling out of love

[A] spirited account of six very spirited individuals

Like her subjects, on horses and steamers, in petticoats and boots, [Wheeler] is wonderfully carried away

Shortlisted for the Dolman Travel Book Award 
 
After reckoning with the ends of the earth in acclaimed books such as Terra Incognita and The Magnetic North, Sara Wheeler rediscovered America thirty-five years after her first Greyhound trip across the country. She returns in turbulent midlife to trace the steps of six women who fled various sorts of trouble in nineteenth-century England and went to the United States to reinvent themselves. 
 
Her travel companions include Fanny Trollope, mother of Anthony and author of the biting Domestic Manners of the Americans; the actress Fanny Kemble, who shocked the nation with her passionate first-hand indictment of slavery; the prolifically pamphleteering economist Harriet Martineau; the homesteader Rebecca Burlend, who had never been more than twelve miles from her Yorkshire village before she sailed to the New World; the traveller Isabella Bird, whose many ailments remained in check as long as she was scaling the Rockies; and the novelist Catherine Hubback, niece of Jane Austen, who deposited her husband in a madhouse and rode the brand-new rails to San Francisco. 
 
Tough-minded outsiders, these women’s truest qualities emerged in a country as incomplete and tentative as their native land was staid and settled. And they discovered second acts for themselves at a time when the world expected them to disappear politely. From the swampy heat of Georgia’s Sea Islands to the icy purity of the Cascades, Sara Wheeler finds their path, and her own.

Travels in the Arctic

The Magnetic North

Over a decade after her exploration of the Antarctic in Terra Incognita, Sara Wheeler uncovers the beautiful, brutal reality of the Arctic.

A wise, provoking and zestful chronicle, poetic, often tragic and always engaging. Wheeler, a prolific raconteur of distant places, has created the finest book on the Arctic since Hugh Brody's The Other Side of Eden

An excellent narrator, intelligent, amusing, poetic and down to earth

Her adventurous spirit, tireless intelligence, and joy shine through...a rare and precious talent

Wheeler's book teaches a lot about what is happening in the far north, which is valuable

Wheeler's beautiful language and riveting narrative add up to a powerful account of what is at stake and what has already been lost

An ambitious, adventurous, well-researched, spirited account

[Wheeler brings] and open-eyed sense of salutary wisdom and timely protest to her view of the Arctic Ocean and its surrounds

Elegant prose ... a stylish and engaing account of some of the world's most mysterious, unknowable spots and, like the best travel writing, is infused with the writer's reflections on growing up, life and death

A funny, entertaining and humane piece of writing

Sara Wheeler is the literary maestro of the earth's frozen regions... The prose is startling and sharp-edged as the icy landscapes themselves

Financial Times, Travel Books of the Year

Irresistibly attractive ... coddling hoosh of personal travelogue,  historical anecdotage and speculative thinking

[Has] a meditative, often melancholy, quality that tells us a lot about what it's like to simply be in the Arctic...the author deftly weaves in some nicely crafted vignettes that illuminate various aspects of the Arctic experience

It is the warmth and the honesty of the portraits that is Wheeler's forte

Wheeler is excellent company for the journey, with her observations on the consequences of our actions always well balanced and open-minded

Is an entertaining mix of popular science, history and reportage, wrapped up in some seriously fine writing

Wonderful account of her journeys through the region

One of the greatest travel books of our times - poignant, funny, a delight to read

Her writing, while brilliantly evocative, is never overblown... If you are lucky you might get to travel in the Arctic yourself; if you don't, this book is the next best thing

Carries lightly a depth of research that gives alarming edge to Wheeler's engrossing

It is a testament to the author's ability that the text never lurches into despondency- above all, this is a book that celebrates the inspiring endurance and colourful past of those who populate the area

In its many-layered discoveries, the book is truly magnetic

'Sara Wheeler is the literary maestro of the earth's frozen regions... The prose is startling and sharp-edged as the icy landscapes themselves' Financial Times 
 
Smashing through the Arctic Ocean with the crew of a Russian icebreaker, herding reindeer across the tundra with Lapps and shadowing the Trans-Alaskan pipeline with truckers, Sara Wheeler discovers a complex and ambiguous land belonging both to ancient myth and modern controversy. 
 
 The Magnetic North is an adroit combination of history, science and reflection in which Wheeler meditates on the role of the Arctic: fragmented lands which fed imaginations long before the scientists and oilmen showed up (not to mention desperado explorers who ate their own shoes). 
 
The Magnetic North tells of all this, plus gulag ghosts, old and new Russia, colliding cultures and bioaccumulated toxins in polar bears. 
 
'A stylish and engaging account of some of the world's most mysterious, unknowable spots and, like the best travel writing, is infused with the writer's reflections on growing up, life and death' Daily Telegraph

Travels in Antarctica

Terra Incognita

A modern classic on exploring and understanding the most uncharted place on our planet.

Antarctica could hope for no better chronicler: spirited, humorous and highly intelligent, she is also a writer of rare talent

Penetrating, vivacious and often amusing, Wheeler's record has a sharp authenticity

She writes with a consistent wry wit... she never lacks empathy, compassion or generosity for people whose values, background and gender were the polar opposite of hers...What she has done could not be done better

Her book is an impressive achievement, one genuinely brushed by the ghosts of the past

Terra Incognita deserves to be a bestseller...a wonderful book and terrific corrective to the polar bulldust periodically emitted by Sir Ralph Wotsisname and others of his ilk

Every phrase, every observation twitches with life; every colour seems her own. Forget Antarctica, the mind is a big place, too. I found myself falling for this writer's strong, incisive wisdom even more than the ice sheet and penguins

I cannot believe that anything better will ever be written about Antarctica

A modern classic on exploring and understanding the Antarctic, the most uncharted place on our planet. 
 
 Terra Incognita is a meditation on the landscape, myths and history of one of the remotest parts of the globe, as well as an encounter with the international temporary residents of the region - living in close confinement despite the surrounding acres of white space - and the mechanics of day-to-day life in extraordinary conditions. Through Sara Wheeler, the Antarctic is revealed, in all its seductive mystery. 
 
'Antarctica could hope for no better chronicler: spirited, humorous and highly intelligent, she is also a writer of rare talent' Observer

The Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton

Too Close To The Sun

A brilliant new biography by the acclaimed author of Cherry and Terra Incognita.

A fascinating story of a man trying to outrun the social upheavals of the twentieth century

Wheeler has made excellent use of the sources at hand... Moreover, Wheeler writes well, and has a gift - shared by only very few - for pinning down the smells and atmosphere of the African landscape

She dazzles the reader with an evocation of time and place.. her description of the east Africa Campaign is detailed and enthralling

She writes beautifully, with a vivid turn of phrase, a sound grasp of history and an impish humour

A richly, indeed sensually atmospheric book... Wheeler writes in headily evocative style

There is a wealth of engaging anecdote... A vividly enjoyable biography

The fruit of prodigious research... There will be no better life of this legendary Englishman

Conservationist, scholar, soldier, white hunter and fabled lover - Denys Finch Hatton was an aristocrat of leonine nonchalance. After a dazzling career at Eton and Oxford, he sailed in 1910 for British East Africa - still then the land of the pioneer. Sara Wheeler reveals the truth behind his love affairs with the glamorous aviatrix Beryl Markham, and - famously - with Karen Blixen, a romance immortalised in her memoir Out of Africa. 
 
'No one who ever met him', his Times obituary concluded, 'whether man or woman, old or young, white or black, failed to come under his spell'.

A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard

Cherry

A brilliant biography of the youngest member of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic.

Accomplishes what only the best biographies can

Beautiful...written with unfailing eloquence and grace, and great admiration for its subject

Brilliantly succeeds not only in bringing this modest man disarmingly to life but also in recreating the England of his time and social setting...a formidable accomplishment

Beautifully written... Wheeler's vocabulary to evoke this luminous and cruel continent appears limitless

With this wonderful biography Sara Wheeler has now vaulted into the front rank of modern British writers...this volume is so much more than a story of one remarkable man. It is among other things an exploration of the mind, a tour through the notions of national identity and pride, and a celebration of the tensile strength of the human spirit

There is insight and elegance in her writing, and the crystal-clear understanding that has made possible the ghostly re-incarnation of this elusive man

She brilliantly communicates the icy spell that holds her, and held Cherry, in its frozen grip

The Antartic world and its explorers linger long after the book is finished

Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1886-1959) was one of the youngest members of Captain Scott's final expedition to the Antarctic. Cherry undertook an epic journey in the Antarctic winter to collect the eggs of the Emperor penguin. The temperature fell to seventy below, it was dark all the time, his teeth shattered in the cold and the tent blew away. 'But we kept our tempers,' Cherry wrote, 'even with God.' 
 
After serving in the First War Cherry was invalided home, and with the zealous encouragement of his neighbour Bernard Shaw he wrote a masterpiece. In The Worst Journey in the World Cherry transformed tragedy and grief into something fine. But as the years unravelled he faced a terrible struggle against depression, breakdown and despair, haunted by the possibility that he could have saved Scott and his companions. 
 
This is the first biography of Cherry. Sara Wheeler, who has travelled extensively in the Antarctic, has had unrestricted access to new material and the full co-operation of Cherry's family.

Sara Wheeler

Wheeler’s writing is full of…strong detail; her drily witty sentences snap like sushki, the crunchy sugared bread rings Russians east with their coffee. Mud and Stars is a pleasure to read slowly… her modest, ungrand tour, with its rich map of extraordinary writers and “ordinary” Russians…is far more of an epic than it at first appears.

[A] literary romp in the footsteps of [Russia’s “big beast” 19th-century] writers — which does not skimp on detail or seriousness… I approached this book thinking that it would be — along with Elif Batuman’s The Possessedand Viv Groskop’s The Anna Karenina Fix — the third in a recent hattrick of women’s journeys through Russian literature. Wheeler goes beyond these books by travelling to the backwaters of Russia so that we don’t have to — we can continue to travel in the comfort of our armchair through the pages of the masterpieces that the great writers left behind.

The image many westerners have of Russia is an unflattering one, heavy on totalitarianism and repression. Sara Wheeler offers an important corrective. Part literary criticism, part travelogue, her fascinating book… is as enthusiastic and authoritative a guide as one could wish for.

Well informed and independent-minded… [Mud and Stars is] an intelligent inquiry into the human condition itself… Wheeler is also side-splittingly funny in her breaking of taboos.

Wheeler is a determined traveller, roving well beyond the itinerary of tourist Russia… [she has] an insight into a random sample of contemporary Russians – how they live, what they think. The outcome is a book that is enjoyable and enlightening in equal measure.

The various stars of the book shine brightly, but they never quite outshine their chronicler… I found Wheeler’s brash humour and courage exhilarating. Mud and Stars is packed with fascinating details.

A superlative tour of modern-day Russia and the nation’s great writers, subjects Wheeler combines with panache.

Travels in Russia

A wonderfully original book about contemporary Russia as seen on journeys in search of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Lermontov, Chekhov, Gogol and Turgenev. 
 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE EDWARD STANDFORD TRAVEL WRITING AWARD 2020 
 
With the writers of the Golden Age as her guides – Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Turgenev, among others – Wheeler travels the length and breadth of Russia to make connections between then and now. On the Trans-Siberian railway, at sail on the Black Sea, or while watching television with her hosts in Soviet apartment blocks, Wheeler searches for a Russia not in the news – a Russia of humanity and daily struggles. 
 
At a time of deteriorating relations between Russia and the West, Wheeler gives a voice to the 'ordinary' people of Russia and discovers how the writers of the past continue to represent their country today.

Sara Wheeler

Praise for Mud and Stars

Wheeler’s writing is full of…strong detail; her drily witty sentences snap like sushki, the crunchy sugared bread rings Russians east with their coffee. Mud and Stars is a pleasure to read sl ...

[A] literary romp in the footsteps of [Russia’s “big beast” 19th-century] writers — which does not skimp on detail or seriousness… I approached this book thinking that it would be — along with Elif Bat ...

The image many westerners have of Russia is an unflattering one, heavy on totalitarianism and repression. Sara Wheeler offers an important corrective. Part literary criticism, part travelogue, her fascinating boo ...

Wheeler’s writing is full of…strong detail; her drily witty sentences snap like sushki, the crunchy sugared bread rings Russians east with their coffee. Mud and Stars is a pleasure to read sl ...

[A] literary romp in the footsteps of [Russia’s “big beast” 19th-century] writers — which does not skimp on detail or seriousness… I approached this book thinking that it would be — along with Elif Bat ...

The image many westerners have of Russia is an unflattering one, heavy on totalitarianism and repression. Sara Wheeler offers an important corrective. Part literary criticism, part travelogue, her fascinating boo ...

Wheeler’s writing is full of…strong detail; her drily witty sentences snap like sushki, the crunchy sugared bread rings Russians east with their coffee. Mud and Stars is a pleasure to read sl ...

[A] literary romp in the footsteps of [Russia’s “big beast” 19th-century] writers — which does not skimp on detail or seriousness… I approached this book thinking that it would be — along with Elif Bat ...

The image many westerners have of Russia is an unflattering one, heavy on totalitarianism and repression. Sara Wheeler offers an important corrective. Part literary criticism, part travelogue, her fascinating boo ...

Books by Sara Wheeler

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