In the heart of the city there are so many lights. The streets are lit up and the people can see themselves and one another with clarity; there’s nowhere to hide. Close by there is the sea: endless, dark, unknowable. Between the two, in a nameless place, live a father and son. They have no …
Willow Heath
Dublin is considered one of the great arts and culture cities in the Western world. It’s a city of incredible authors, with a rich and deep literary history. It’s also home to some of the best tattoo artists in Europe. But who are they, and where do they work? Let’s take a look here at …
How much do you know about The Hague? Perhaps that it’s home to one of the best universities in Western Europe, as well as the Peace Palace and the International Court of Justice? The Hague does indeed have all of that and so much more besides. Den Haag beach, for example, is an endless strip …
At the age of 25, after the events of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China, Jung Chang moved to London. There, she wrote a biography which told an epic story of herself, her mother, and her grandmother. Three women of 20th century revolutionary China. That book, Wild Swans, was a global sensation and a book …
If there are two statistics that are ever on the rise, it’s the number of people getting tattoos and the distance/frequency of travel, especially amongst young people. As travel writers who are both heavily tattooed, we can attest to this! And so, it makes sense that the biggest themes and trends in tattooing right now …
Bristol in the 21st century is one of the UK’s most beloved cities. It stands shoulder-to-shoulder with London, Edinburgh, Bath, and Brighton as being one of the great arts and culture cities of Britain. Bristol was also our home for a year; we miss it every day. If you get a chance to live in …
So many of our greatest stories of terror and the supernatural come from faraway lands. A nation’s laws, customs, traditions, politics, and religion will have a profound effect on what kinds of stories they want to tell. Horror is a magnificent genre that takes heavy themes, chews them up, and spits them out as something …
Ah, Wales. Land of rugged mountains, quiet village communities, Rugby fanatics, and the most charming accent in Britain. Wales is where both of us at Books and Bao have spent a lot of our time: one having been born and raised in Swansea, and the other having studied at Aberystwyth University. Wales is a nation …
As a lover of heritage sites across the world, it’s difficult to hold back my excitement for a place like Blenheim Palace. This UNESCO World Heritage site is the only British palace to be awarded the title of ‘palace’ without any royal connection at all. Built in the extremely rare English baroque style of architecture, …
Translated from the Spanish by Annie McDermott How do we define narrative? Traditional narratives as we typically think of them involve an entirely fictional story laid out with familiar beats: chapters, dialogue, and paragraphing; a beginning, middle, and end; exposition, themes, and motifs. But experimental forms of narrative, the kinds that have existed for centuries …