Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

A good book, full of great images, that can be used as a travel guide and made me wish I could visit some of the places.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

An interesting approach to the popular walking anthologies. I thought, coming from a walking family (which being a wheelchair user, myself), I had read all the different walking guides there were. But this is a great innovation and brings connection to different places and artists. Great walks, maps and descriptions.

A beautiful book, with interesting details on the lives of the featured artists, full of inspiration for walks all around the world. I often choose holiday destinations based on literary and cultural connections, so can’t wait until we can travel again to try some of them out!

Thank you NetGalley for a chance to read and review this! This was super pretty and nice to read! I honestly want to make an effort and go on these walks once things clear up.

I loved the photos in the book; just flicking through them was an enjoyable experience, particularly during this time, and a great way of opening up possibilities for international travel, when available again.

One thing I would have liked to see was more even coverage of countries outside the Western ones.

Walking has never been so popular, both as a pastime or a purpose, with previously sedentary individuals nowadays referring to electronic devices before announcing their daily step-count. But even those who remain inactive are watching popular walking-themed programmes presented by Julia Bradbury and Tony Robinson. With travel agencies increasingly offering holidays for ramblers, it’s unsurprising that publishing houses are tapping into this market and catering to a burgeoning readership. Against this backdrop, in 2016, A History of the World in 500 Walks was published, with author Sarah Baxter receiving praise for compelling ‘even the most dedicated armchair traveller […] to get up and take a walk themselves.’

Roll on four years and a similarly alluring front cover adorns 500 Walks with Writers, Artists & Musicians, edited by Kath Stathers, who’s one of 13 contributors to the similarly long 400-page book. Comprising six chapters, each representing a distinct geographical zone, respective headings are as follows: ‘North and Central America’ (pp.10-109); ‘South America’ (110-129); ‘Europe’ (130-317); ‘Africa and the Middle East’ (318-339); ‘Russia and Asia’ (340-373); and ‘Australasia’ (374-389). Each walk is colour coded to indicate whether it’s inspired by a writer (yellow), artist (red) or musician (green). This organisational layout, together with the quantity of quality illustrations included, ensures that 500 Walks with is an accessible and easy-to-use guide. But is Stanford’s Book of the Month (March) as impressive substantively as it is stylistically?

Yes. The selection of walks presented is nothing if not eclectic given they range between short (a quarter of a mile stroll in the UK) and long (a 500-mile pilgrimage between France and Spain; for the wannabe Levison Wood or Ash Dykes, there’s the 2,675-mile trek between Spain and Egypt), urban and rural, as well as along well-trodden paths and off the beaten track. The walks are inspired by a figure in the arts, with each listing containing snippets of information on the individual and their work(s). Those afforded page-length prominence include – in a section on the left-hand side – supplementary details pertaining to ‘Route/Where’, ‘Length’ and ‘Essential Reading/Viewing/Listening’. These listings customarily feature a photograph of the person and a map of the trail, proceeded by an illustration of what the reader could expect to see when following in their footsteps, be it a house within which an author wrote their magnum opus, a view that an artist painted or a place where bandmembers first met.

It will surprise few to learn that the end of the last sentence refers to the start of The Beatles. The coming together of John Lennon (1940-1980) and Paul McCartney (1942–) left an imprint on modern music, to be sure, and fans won’t be disappointed with the number of sites listed (around Woolton, Liverpool) in the 100-odd-word paragraph preceding a full-colour photo of the gates to Strawberry Field. In addition to the Fab Four, the reader is introduced to a mixed duo-of-sorts of Chilean activist folk singers best known for the politically inflected Nueva Canción movement: Violeta Parra (1917-1967) and Víctor Jara (1932-1973), the latter murdered during the coup of 1973 that installed General Augusto Pinochet into La Moneda, the presidential palace being roughly mid-point in the six-and-a-half mile walk through Santiago which starts in the area where Parra lived (now home to the Museum of Memory and Human Rights) and ends where both she and Jara lie in repose. That Jara’s little known to many in the West doesn’t disguise the fact he’s an international icon of resistance: ‘[a] cross between Bob Dylan and Martin Luther King’, according to a Netflix documentary. Both Dylan (1941–) and King (1929-1968) feature, as does knowledgeable commentary, though it’s practical details such as requiring a taxi (for safety purposes) around the neighbourhood of Rio Vermelho when on the trail of Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado (1912-2001) that goes some way to justifying the cover price (£20).

For all the talk of music, and fleeting reference to literature in South America, much of the book concentrates on literary-related walks in the US and Europe: from Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) in Washington state, Harper Lee (1926-2016) in Alabama and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) in Florida to Agatha Christie (1890-1976) in Torquay, UK, Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) in Skien, Norway, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) in St. Petersburg, Russia. A four-mile “café crawl” around Budapest, Hungary, should quench the thirst of the bibliosoph, both metaphorically and literally, and leave the reader hungry to learn more about la belle époque (c.1871-1914) patrons. The readership of children’s authors A.A. Milne (1882-1956), Roald Dahl (1916-1990) and JK Rowling (1965–) are also catered for, although the latter walk is largely confined to an Edinburgh café from where the Harry Potter author purportedly drew inspiration for her fantastical stories. That Anne Hathaway’s Cottage is listed as a visitor-worthy attraction in William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) Stratford-upon-Avon isn’t a surprise; reference to Hathaway (c.1556-1623) as ‘the woman behind [the Bard’s] success’ is, however, a pleasant one.

Some walks don’t relate directly to a book, artwork or piece of music, such as number 105, which concerns the novelist Toni Morrison’s (1931-2019) Bench by the Road project honouring slaves shipped to the US. That these benches are dotted around the country could – from a literal standpoint – disqualify them from entry, yet they render tangible the notion of slavery, what may have hitherto been abstract to some. Staying in Massachusetts, where the strands of literature and art link together again in a double helix, is walk 117: a sculpture called Boston Women’s Memorial commemorating, among two others, Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784). Wheatley was the first African American to publish a book of poetry, which was no small feat given she was transported from West Africa aboard the ship “Phillis” prior to being auctioned as a slave and bought by the Wheatley family – two facts that furnished her name. Although coded yellow, signifying a literary theme, these walks encourage reflection at an installation without acknowledging the corresponding artists. This notwithstanding, both remain inspired choices, alongside short walks in Kolkata, India (poet Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941), Durban, South Africa (anti-apartheid activist-author Fatima Meer, 1928-2010), and Lagos, Nigeria (Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, 1938-1997), in memory of artists who railed respectively against colonial, racist and corrupt governments. A three-mile walk around Aracataca, Colombia (magical-realist novelist Gabriel García Márquez, 1927-2014), is also a must for literary pilgrims.

The reviewer is grateful for the introduction to Kazi Nazrul Islam (1899-1976), a rebellious Bengali literary figure – indeed the national poet – when outlining a tour around Dhaka, Bangladesh. Yet was surprised to read only one entry for Iran, with the contributors overlooking Ferdowsi (c.935-c.1020-26), a Persian poet who pre-dates the two who appear: namely Hafiz (1315-1390) and Saadi (1210-1291), worthy subjects of a walk between two tombs, which is preceded by a page-length photo of the garden surrounding Hafiz’s mausoleum in Shiraz. Digressing momentarily back to Ferdowsi and the high-end criticism pertaining to his omission, his writing of the Shahnameh (Book of Kings) – an epic storybook of pre-Islamic Iran – has led statues, squares and a subway station to be named in his honour in Tehran, though his tomb is in an orchard in Tus, the north-eastern city of his birth around which a walk appears fruitful.

No. With as many as 500 walks covered, not every one will inspire the reader to lace up their boots, but a few are gravely uninspiring. Unlike some walks featured – merely to attain the holy grail number? – ones relating to Dan Brown’s (1964–) The Da Vinci Code (a half-mile walk between the Ritz Hotel and Louvre museum) and George Orwell’s (1903-1950) Nineteen Eighty-Four (counting the number of cameras between the author’s London home and a junction) should’ve been easy wins for this hardback. Minor publishing errors are common in any book, and this one’s no exception, with Lahore stated as the capital of Pakistan (rather than Islamabad), 1967 as the year when Chinese painter Qi Baishi died (1863-1957), and no caption attributed to the Bruges photo; even when captioned, positioning of photos can lead to confusion whereby an artwork of Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) can be misattributed to Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

This pales into relative insignificance, though, when compared with the fact that over half of the walks (261) are to be found in the ‘Europe’ chapter; to compound matters, European figures such as Karen Blixen (1885-1962) and T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935) are the focus in two of the 27 walks listed under ‘Africa and the Middle East’. Historian Peter Frankopan cautions against Eurocentrism in The Silk Roads: A New History of the World for it thwarts ten percent of the world population from naming, say, an ‘Arabic popstar or a Chinese novelist’, an area (Middle East and Asia) collectively comprising approximately 80 percent. Despite global appearances, the book’s Eurocentric lens serves as a reminder to broaden horizons, even decolonise curricula, a hotly contested topic which the reviewer endeavours to cool through a reappraisal of Orientalist art.

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863) is referred to when discussing French novelist George Sand, albeit only fleetingly possibly because the Romantic painter is considered one of the arch villains of “Orientalism”. (Yet ‘dated’ views don’t preclude Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) from appearing.) The reason? Women of Algiers (1834) is evidence Delacroix didn’t travel with a tabula rasa but was influenced specifically by his trip accompanying a diplomatic mission to Morocco in 1832, and from 1830, the French conquest of Algeria more generally. This is the thinking of late art historian Linda Nochlin, who transposed into art history Edward Said’s seminal text Orientalism, which toxified the term (propelling it into the dictionary of curse words) by blanket-accusing writers in the West of stereotyping the East, thereby helping legitimise powers in the former to penetrate lands in the latter.

The symbiosis of soft-power cultural representation and hard-power political domination notwithstanding, contributors could’ve still included David Roberts (1796-1864), a Scottish painter known for his lithographs of an Egypt free of the yoke of European control. Egypt was administered by the Ottomans for three-and-a-half centuries (save the years 1798-1801), however, an empire headquartered in Constantinople from where “self-Orientalist” painter Osman Hamdi Bey (1842-1910) breathed his first and last breath. They each refrained from using an eroticised, voyeuristic style, so omitting them deprives the reader of mesmerising meanders around the bazaars of Cairo or Karnak temple, which sits in elegant ruin near Luxor, as well as a continent-spanning Turkey, with mosques and a mausoleum in Bursa (Asia) and museums in Istanbul (Europe) being points of interest. (Fans of Hamdi Bey can visit his house, now a museum, in Gebze, 40 miles from Pera Museum in Istanbul, home to a virtual reality installation.)

Étienne Dinet (1861-1929) was a French-born, Arabic-speaking portraitist who immersed himself in Algerian culture and Muslim life. Highly respected for his conservative representations of desert-dwelling Bedouin, depictions of naked women – painted after he converted to Islam, whereupon he took the name Nasreddine – are contained within his Orientalist oeuvre. The inhabitants of Bou-Saâda were Dinet’s muse, which is where his home is located, inside of which lies a museum, next to his tomb. That he doesn’t feature is pardonable even though – despite contributors’ admission that ‘many parts of Algeria are off limits to hikers’ – reference is accorded to the same Saharan oasis town before outlining a walk offering a ‘sense’ of what composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934) ‘experienced’.

At a time when there’s mention of “cancelling” playwright Shakespeare, composer Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) and poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985), advocating the merits of Orientalist art(ists) could be viewed as lobbing a petrol-bomb into the flames of dissenting opinion. Yet examination of Said’s thesis reveals that the nineteenth-century art movement wasn’t a monolithic endeavour wholly dedicated to propagating Orientalist tropes of passivity and submission; indeed, some attributed agency to Algerian and Ottoman subjects. Furthermore, not all the artists were Occidental, meaning Hamdi Bey’s inclusion would help decolonise any future volume. The present edition possess substance as well as style, however, for in addition to being more technicolour than monochrome, 500 Walks with is useful on dull days when no steps are counted since it inspires ‘a walk of the mind’ while discovering new writers, artists and musicians.

I can't wait to be able to travel again so that I can visit some of the places mentioned here, but revisiting the entries for places I have been was wonderful.

This would be a great resource for book groups looking for reading suggestions as well as a way for readers to armchair travel for pleasure.

This would make an excellent coffee table book with its cool photographs and short information. And any walking lover would appreciate the locations and the related writer, artist or musician that comes with it. Cool book.

Excellent guide to some inspired walks, completed some already so can confirm the research has been done well. Lovely photos, facts and features of the walks and duration all very useful. A go to book for when planning your travels. Thank you #NetGalley for the copy.

This is a fantastic book. Incredibly well researched, very engaging and full of wonderful photographs and tons of places to visit when the world opens up again! I really like that there are some nuggets of information about well-trodden paths, as well as different areas to explore - I found out new things about places on my own doorstep! There are some walks featured in places I never really intend to visit, but even with these it is very interesting to read who has lived or visited where. A refreshing take on a classic theme, full of inspirational ideas.

With thanks to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group - White Lion for an advance copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Such an interesting book, great colorful images and inspiring ideas for walks. Can't wait to experience some of the local walks in the book and also take it with me next time I'm on holiday.

For those of us straining under Covid lockdowns, this book is a delightful tease, a way to plan for those trips that we will all, hopefully, be able to make again soon. Taking readers (and walkers) around the world, Stathers provides both insight into the artist whose territory she’s stalking and practical information about the hike itself. From novice or those of us a little out of shape to walks for the more advanced hikers, or just folks who want to dream of being able to travel again, this is a lovely, intellectual breath of fresh air