Wild Italy

In Wild Italy, Tim Jepson leaves the well-worn tourist haunts of traditional guide books behind him in search of fresher pleasures. He offers a rural, rather than an urban Italy, revealing the best of the long walks, mountain hideaways, woods, plains, sea coasts and remote islands where travellers can still find a refuge from the modern world. He explores the whole country from its Alp-studded waist to its distant toe kicking the football of Sicily towards Africa. Like an unhurried lover, he works his way down thigh and shin, following the line of the Apennines, locating the pressure points between continental and peninsular Italy, pinching to see where the prosperous north gives way to the Mediterranean south, looking for those last empty stretches of littoral, down one side and up the other, where the bathers have yet to set up their parasols.

'Readers of the second edition of Tim Jepson's gem of a book will be... thanking the author for leading them away from the obvious in Italy - the cities and galleries, the beaches - and into the wild.' - The Sunday Times. 'Beautiful photographs and excellent maps... He encourages you to visit the wilderness of the Abruzzi or experience the excitement of Mount Etna.' - The Independent on Sunday.

Tim Jepson was educated at Oxford where he studied English Literature. He is the author of six books about Italy and has a particular interest in Tuscany and Umbria. He lived in Italy for five years and wrote for The Sunday Telegraph as their Rome-Italy correspondent. He has covered other areas of the world in Train Journeys of the World, Mediterranean Wildlife and the Rough Guides to Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Tim worked as a travel editor for London’s Daily Telegraph, and continues to travel extensively. He is working on the Atlas of British History for National Geographic.