Gone To Timbuktu

A masterclass on photography, in this funny, intimate conversation about therapists, the role of luck, Marxist newspapers, and sleeping on the ledge of a bubbling lava lake in the DRC. With multi awardwinning photographer, Tom Parker. 

The acclaimed British artist George Butler draws in situ with pen, ink and watercolour, his travels taking him to Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine and more. His reportage illustration is the 'art of travel' at its most urgent — with this conversation zeroing in on the big question: can art make a difference?

An extraordinary desert traveller and social anthropologist bursts all the cliches as she takes us on a journey into the heart of the Sahara to reveal its complex human history. Instead of an imagined city of gold, Judith Scheele reveals something of the real Timbuktu, unpicking the myths and the romance in a discussion based on two decades of field research in Mali, Southern Algeria and Northern Chad. 

The German documentary photographer drills into the challenges and opportunities of making work that matters, for the New York Times, New Yorker, ZEIT and more. A fascinating insight into a photographer at the top of the game, working in Siberia, the Arctic, Ukraine, and the fringes of a rapidly changing Europe. 

The British author talks about his latest book, Lone Wolf — following in the footsteps of a wolf named Slavc, who crosses the Alps from Slovenia to the Italian Dolomites in search of a mate.

The journalist and biographer Lance Richardson takes on a titan of American literature, Peter Matthiessen — novelist, naturalist, Zen teacher, one-time CIA agent, and author of one of the classic travel books of the 20th century, The Snow Leopard.

The South African author, explorer and conservationist takes us on a magnetic river journey through the great spine of Africa. His storytelling leads us into the dreamscape of 'Ghost Elephants' — Werner Herzog's new film following Steve in Angola. 

The Nigerian author talks about two books: one a journey across his homeland reaching for fragments of history from his nation's civil war, the other a powerful dreamscape evoking the cities of the Sahel, from N'Djamena to Khartoum. 

In Greyhound, the Canadian-Irish author Joanna Pocock takes us on a journey across America by bus, in a truly modern blend of memoir, reportage, and the literary imagination. 

The American master of biography talks about the subject of his most recent obsession: the Scottish traveller, South Seas adventurer and prose genius, Robert Louis Stevenson. To the likes of Henry James and Italo Calvino, Stevenson's  'kinetic' energy makes him one of the great storytellers of all time.