Inspiring Travel Writing from Lucretia Stewart
Lucretia Stewart was born in Singapore and educated in Ankara, Peking, Washington DC and England. She read English Literature at Edinburgh University. She has worked extensively as a journalist; until she began writing books in 1990, it was the only career that she pursued.
She is the author of Tiger Balm: Travels in Laos, Vietnam & Cambodia (1992); The Weather Prophet: A Caribbean Journey (1995), which was short-listed for the 1996 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and Making Love: A Romance (1999), and the editor of Erogenous Zones: An Anthology of Sex Abroad(2000) and Travelling Hopefully: A Golden Age of Travel Writing (2006).
Lucretia was commissioning editor at Granta from 1998-1990 and she remains a contributing editor to the magazine. She also contributed the chapter on Caribbean literature to The World Atlas of Literature, edited by Malcom Bradbury (1996); Lotus Season (about Cambodia) to Amazonians (1997), and The Man in the Van (1999) to the London issue of Granta. She lives in Naxos, Greece.
She is the author of Tiger Balm: Travels in Laos, Vietnam & Cambodia (1992); The Weather Prophet: A Caribbean Journey (1995), which was short-listed for the 1996 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, and Making Love: A Romance (1999), and the editor of Erogenous Zones: An Anthology of Sex Abroad(2000) and Travelling Hopefully: A Golden Age of Travel Writing (2006).
Lucretia was commissioning editor at Granta from 1998-1990 and she remains a contributing editor to the magazine. She also contributed the chapter on Caribbean literature to The World Atlas of Literature, edited by Malcom Bradbury (1996); Lotus Season (about Cambodia) to Amazonians (1997), and The Man in the Van (1999) to the London issue of Granta. She lives in Naxos, Greece.
Articles by Lucretia Stewart
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A Caribbean Primer
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Lucretia Stewart
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United States
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California
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Palm Springs
A 1978 New Yorker cartoon depicted a middle-aged couple talking over drinks: it bore the caption: 'Let's go to the Caribbean or someplace and give our brains a rest.' This is a little unfair, but it is true that one of the reasons that people love...
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The Real Greek
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Lucretia Stewart
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Greece
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Cyclades (south)
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Naxos
To the east of Naxos, the largest (and most beautiful) of the Cyclades, lie four tiny, exquisite, virtually uninhabited islands, the Small Cyclades or Mikres Kyklades. These are Iraklia (not to be confused with Iraklion, the capital of Crete);...
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Bursa
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Lucretia Stewart
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Turkey
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Marmara
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Bursa
Even the buses in Bursa are green, the same pale bluey-green of the Caribbean sea, the colour of the tiles on the Yesil Turbe, the mausoleum of Mehemet I. So are the police information kiosks, which look rather like the TARDIS in “Doctor Who...
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Hotel Riad Al Madina
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Lucretia Stewart
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Morocco
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Atlantic Coast
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Essaouira
Across the bottom of the price list for the Hotel Riad Al Madina in Essaouira is written, in a flowing italic script, 'Vivre au 18eme Siècle' - live in the eighteenth century. The hotel (originally a private house) was actually built in 1871 so, at...
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Istanbul
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Lucretia Stewart
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Turkey
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Marmara
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Istanbul
When I was a little girl, my father was attached to the British Embassy in Ankara and we spent our summers in Istanbul. I have a photograph of myself, posing coyly in a ballet position, in the grounds of what is now the British Consulate. Even from...
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Key West
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Lucretia Stewart
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United States
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Florida
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Key West
When Ernest Hemingway was asked why, in the Thirties, he had fetched up in Key West, he was supposed to have answered rather grouchily that there was nowhere left to run to. When he met Martha Gellhorn in a bar called Sloppy Joe's, he learnt that...
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Marrakesh
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Lucretia Stewart
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Morocco
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Marrakech Region
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Marrakech
When you arrive in Marrakech, it will most likely be at night because that's when the flights usually come in. As you drive in from the airport, along the dark, palm-fringed roads, past the massive, silent bulk of the city walls, as you approach the...
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Páfos
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Lucretia Stewart
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Cyprus
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Western Cyprus
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Paphos
The west coast of Cyprus hides its scars surprisingly well. There is little evidence of the disruption and heartache caused to Greek Cypriots by the Turkish invasion of 1974 which sealed off the northern, and reputedly most beautiful, part of the...
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Naxos
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Lucretia Stewart
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Greece
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Cyclades (south)
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Naxos
Naxos is the largest and most beautiful of the Cyclades - or so the guidebooks always say. While it may lack the picture-postcard perfection of Mykonos or the drama of Santorini, I like it precisely because it is so big. You can lose yourself in...
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Macau
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Lucretia Stewart
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China
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Macau
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Macau City
"A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root Between some yellow mountains and a sea, Its gay stone houses an exotic fruit, A Portugal-cum-China oddity Rococco images of saint and saviour Promises its gamblers fortunes when they die. Churches among...
