Books and publications by Robert Bovington

click below to see more...

http://pinterest.com/robertbovington/books-publications-by-robert-bovington/

more blogs by Robert Bovington...

"Photographs of Spain"	http://bovingtonphotosofspain.blogspot.com/
"Spanish Impressions"	http://bobbovington.blogspot.com/
"postcards from Spain"	http://bovington-posts.blogspot.com/
"you couldn't make it up!"	http://bovingtonycmitup.blogspot.com/
"a grumpy old man in Spain"	http://grumpybobbov.blogspot.com/
"bits and bobs"	http://bovingtonbitsandblogs.blogspot.com/
"Spanish Expressions"	http://spanishsayingsbovington.blogspot.com/
"Spanish Art"	http://bovingtonspanishart.blogspot.com/

Books about Spain

Part of my 'Books about Spain' pinboard on Pinterest...

Click on the following link to see more of books about Spain...

http://pinterest.com/robertbovington/books-about-spain/

more blogs by Robert Bovington...

"Photographs of Spain"	http://bovingtonphotosofspain.blogspot.com/
"Spanish Impressions"	http://bobbovington.blogspot.com/
"postcards from Spain"	http://bovington-posts.blogspot.com/
"you couldn't make it up!"	http://bovingtonycmitup.blogspot.com/
"a grumpy old man in Spain"	http://grumpybobbov.blogspot.com/
"bits and bobs"	http://bovingtonbitsandblogs.blogspot.com/
"Spanish Expressions"	http://spanishsayingsbovington.blogspot.com/
"Spanish Art"	http://bovingtonspanishart.blogspot.com/

Robert Bovington's author page on Amazon.com

Travel writer Robert Bovington's author page on Amazon.com....

https://www.amazon.com/author/robertbovington

Robert Bovington's Books on Lulu

Author Spotlight

More Detail

SPANISH IMPRESSIONSBy Robert Bovington Paperback: List Price: £14.71£13.24 You Save: 10% Ships in 3–5 business days This item has not been rated yet Robert Bovington is an Englishman living in Spain. He is so enthralled with his adopted country that it has inspired him to... More > Add to Basket

More Detail

SPANISH MATTERSBy Robert Bovington Paperback: List Price: £9.99 £8.99You Save: 10% Ships in 3–5 business days This item has not been rated yet Bob and Diane have made the life-changing decision to retire to sunny Andalucía. Instead of lazing on the beach they... More > Add to Basket

More Detail

SPANISH VISIONSBy Robert Bovington Paperback: List Price: £20.99£18.89 You Save: 10% Ships in 3–5 business days This item has not been rated yet "SPANISH VISIONS" Robert Bovington is an Englishman living in Spain. He is enthusiastic about his adopted country and its... More > Add to Basket

More Detail

SPANISH IMPRESSIONSBy Robert Bovington Ebook (PDF): £7.00 Download immediately This item has not been rated yet Robert Bovington is an Englishman living in Spain. He is enthusiastic about his adopted country and its people - so much so,... More > Add to Basket

More Detail

SPANISH MATTERSBy Robert Bovington Ebook (PDF): £6.00 Download immediately This item has not been rated yet Bob and Diane have made the life-changing decision to retire to sunny Andalucía. Instead of lazing on the beach they...More > Add to Basket

More Detail

SPANISH VISIONS (an ebook)By Robert Bovington Ebook (PDF): £8.00 Download immediately This item has not been rated yet "SPANISH VISIONS" Robert Bovington is an Englishman living in Spain. He is enthusiastic about his adopted country and its... More > Add to Basket

"Familiar Spanish Travels” by William Dean Howells

A review by Robert Bovington

William Dean Howells (1837 – 1920)

In October 1911, American William Dean Howells travelled to Spain. The author wrote about his experiences in “Familiar Spanish Travels”.

As an avid reader of books about Spain, I have mixed feelings about this book. Certainly, I did not enjoy it as much as other books that I have read on the subject. I found Howells’ literary style too verbose. I wonder whether the author thought: “Why use two or three pithy adjectives when two or three pages of text will do the same job!” 

He describes with great detail the strangers that he encounters on his travels, yet often provides little detail on the principal sights. Many of Howells’ sentences are inordinately long – 40, 50 words or more! Yet, despite his longwinded descriptions, Howells manages to convey his thoughts to the reader in both a poetic and an extremely descriptive manner. The reader can easily imagine the bleakness of the Meseta and the “insurpassably dirty and dangerous” gipsy quarters of Granada and Seville. Howells certainly was not, what we today call, politically correct. He frequently describes some of the Spanish women as fat. Nor did the author view his surroundings with rose tinted spectacles. He mentions bad breakfasts; freezing hotels, cold rainy streets and “the thick and noisome stench” of Cervantes former home in Valladolid. But he waxed lyrical about a great deal of his experiences too: the incomparable grandeur of Burgos Cathedral; the glorious masterpiece that is Murillo’s “Vision of St Anthony”; the unparalleled beauty of the Alhambra and the magnificent structure that is the Puente Nuevo in Ronda are shortened versions of just some of his descriptions. 

I know people’s tastes are different but what really surprised me was the author’s likes and dislikes regarding the places he visited. He did not like Córdoba but, to be fair, it was raining during his visit and he described the houses as “wet and chill”. However, he was also disappointed in that city’s beautiful Mezquita. Yet he really liked Algeciras! Certainly, from the author’s text, I gathered that he preferred ‘people watching’ to visiting the famous sights, which probably explains the imbalance between his descriptions of people and his accounts of the places visited. But, then, the whole expedition was unbalanced. He spent only half an hour in Toledo’s magnificent Cathedral and not much longer in the Mezquita, yet he visited Seville Cathedral every day during his fortnight’s stay! He appears to have enjoyed Madrid, especially the Prado and he was greatly taken with Granada though, more for the views from within and without the Alhambra than for the wonderful Arabic architecture. He preferred the Palace of Charles V to the Nasrid Palaces in that magnificent monument to the Moors rule in Spain. 

Notwithstanding the author’s idiosyncrasies, “Familiar Spanish Travels” will probably be an enjoyable read for those readers who wish to partake of a “warts and all” commentary of life in early 2oth century Spain. 

Robert Bovington 

April 2011 

Glories of Spain by Charles W. Wood

A Review by Robert Bovington

“Glories of Spain” was published in 1901 and describes the travels and adventures of Charles W. Wood and his friends, on a trip to Spain. 

Despite the book title, the party only visited the east of the country. Nevertheless it is a thoroughly enjoyable read. 

Charles W. Wood thoroughly describes the places he visits – Gerona, Barcelona, Montserrat, Manresa, Lerida, Zaragoza, Tarragona, Poblet, Tortosa and Valencia but, more than that he provides the reader with a thoroughly entertaining dialogue of the people he meets and their stories. And what an interesting bunch! They included former sweethearts Sister Rosalie and Father Anselmo who sacrificed their love for each other for a life in the Church and the hopeful reward of life together in Heaven; Ernesto and his mother; Salvador the Monk who preferred to live in a cave than the monastery at Montserrat and Monseigneur Delormais and his world-wide travels. Then there was the downtrodden night porter and his wife Rose aka the Dragon; Quasimodo and his beautiful music; blind Nerissa and her husband Alphonse; Loretta & her donkeys and more. 

The author enthuses over many of the monuments he visits and provides the reader with detailed histories of some of the places. 

Surprisingly, Charles W. Wood is not well known. Very little information was to be found about him when I researched using the Internet. His mother, however, was a famous author – Mrs Henry Wood wrote over thirty novels, the most famous being East Lynn. 

Charles W. Wood did write other travel books including “Letters from Majorca” and "In the Valley of the Rhone. He should not be confused with another author of the same name – an American who wrote “The Passing of Normalcy”. 

In summary, “Glories of Spain” is a delightful travelogue written by an Englishman in the late 1890s. 

Robert Bovington 

May 2011

from 1901 edition

Castilian Days by John Hay

A Review by Robert Bovington

Castilian Days

I enjoyed this book. Unlike many travel books about Spain, it was not all about cathedrals, churches and castles.

American John Milton Hay was more famous as a statesman than as an author – amongst other things he was the 37th Secretary of State. He had also performed the role of private secretary to Abraham Lincoln and one of his publications “Abraham Lincoln: A History” which he co-wrote with John G. Nicolay was published in 1890. 

“Castilian Days” was first published in 1875, though my copy was the Holiday Edition of 1903, recently launched in Kindle e-book format by Project Gutenberg. 

The book is a good balance between people and places. The first part of the book is dedicated to the habits and customs of the ordinary people of Castile in the late 19th century. This is followed by a vivid description of the bullfight – a bit too vivid for my liking. Hay describes all the gory details, which includes horses being gored to death – old horses that have been worked to (near) death in the intense heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter. So, if you are squeamish, miss that chapter.

John Milton Hay

The remainder of the book is less morbid. These final chapters are mostly about some of the “must see” sights of this area of Spain – Madrid’s Prado, Segovia, Toledo, the Escorial and Cervantes hometown of Alcalá de Henares.

The author does include some background history of the places he visits and provides the reader with a balanced account of these locations – sometimes with enthusiasm but with the occasional averse comment. 

There is also a chapter about holidays and fiestas. 

Unless I am mistaken, there is no mention of the year in which John Hay undertook his journey around Castile. It must have been between 1873 and 1874 because he writes of the country being a republic. Despite the fact that the book is set over a century ago, many of the descriptions applied to the Spanish people and places, in my mind, still hold true today.

Escorial - sacristy

San Juan de los Reyes - cloisters

A Long Hard Slog

Spanish Steps - Travels With My Donkey by Tim Moore


A Review by Robert Bovington

I found this book annoying, often tedious, occasionally interesting and very occasionally funny.

So why did I find the book annoying? Well to start with, various critics have described the author as humorous - inside the book cover, 'Image' described Tim as "Without a doubt, the funniest travel writer in the world"; the 'Irish Times' even hailed him as the new Bill Bryson. What rubbish! I find Bill Bryson so interesting and amusing that I have read all his travel books two or three times and even his other, more serious, works like "Mother Tongue" and "Shakespeare" are funnier and better written than Tim Moore's book about his long expedition with a donkey. Like his journey, I found the book a long hard slog.

I found his writing style extremely verbose, sometimes undecipherable and often plain irritating - okay, the word 'click' may be military slang for a kilometre but I found the copious use of the word irksome. I found his humour often grated - too many puns and too adolescent. I certainly didn't 'laugh out loud' but, to be fair, I did chuckle to myself on a couple of occasions. I didn't mind, either, some of his 'toilet' humour, though there were too many references to donkey poo for my liking. 

So what were the good points? Well, Tim Moore follows the travel writer's 'well worn path' by describing many of the places he visits and supplementing this with quite a bit of history. He does this quite well. He also manages to get across to the reader the sheer scale of the journey - the good bits and the bad. Blistered, sometimes sun-scorched, occasionally rain-soaked, the author does a credible job of describing his 750-kilometre trek across northern Spain accompanied by a donkey. 

I can applaud Tim Moore for completing the 'Compostela de Santiago' even if his ulterior motive was to provide material for a book. However, in my view, it is nowhere near the best travel book I have read. He may have walked the way of St. James but he is not yet fit to be mentioned in the same company as Washington Irving, Gerald Brenan, Ernest Hemingway or Chris Stewart - nor Bill Bryson.