Sophy Roberts

The awardwinning German documentary photographer in conversation this week on the podcast, Gone to Timbuktu, talking about his work in , , the and more. Humble to the core, Emile has cracked a profession so many aspire to, yet so few can break into, given the diminishing opportunities for serious reportage in a celebrity-obsessed, fake-news world. His work takes us into the stories he finds at the peripheries that stand for the centre of things: human suffering in war, memory under repressive regimes, everyday lives behind the front lines. For more of his work, published in and (among others) see www.emileducke.com. And please, please, listen to him talk. It’s a special episode x

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A few years ago, my brilliant friend started a travel book club - a few of us, from Rome, Positano, Rabat, London, Dorset, Bath, Maine … Once a month, we meet on zoom. To read Martha Gellhorn … Kapucinski… Chouri … Lindquist … … Calvino … Gurnah … Sybille Bedford … Naipaul …

Because of books, our curious group have become dear friends. Wives, husbands and partners too. This weekend, we gathered here .sinclair in . Thank you for making it happen. We read (and for once didn’t disagree), drank, feasted, laughed, feasted, drank, laughed, enjoyed.

A reminder of the deep pleasures and friendships that can come of a shared passion for literature, for travels past and journeys ahead.

‘Not another mem-moi’, as my husband calls the stack of books growing beside my bed. He complains there’s too much of it, and I suspect he’s right. But there are a few I will defend. Authors who use their personal experience to open up the universal in ways that can make a stranger cry.

That’s what happened to me last week when I was teaching a course in narrative non-fiction. During a one-on-one tutorial, I was handed a short story by one of the quietest members of the group. Maybe 600 or 700 words, which I read there and then.

A beautiful, true piece of writing. A simple scene, simply told, threaded with the same gentle humility that gave that person such extraordinary presence in the room.

Anyway, the writer wrote to thank me for the week’s teaching. His note came with a gift: a pot of green ink and a green pen based on a quote I’d read out in class about Virginia Woolf’s writing habits — her daily practice, marking up her commonplace notebooks.

So there you go. A treasure I will treasure, always.
And a story I won’t forget.

From Balmain fashion shows in the 1970s, to the blood-red juice of Afghanistan’s humble pomegranates. From a satin wedding dress trembling on its hanger in a besieged hotel, to moments of heart-rending levity in the midst of a living hell when a caricature, drawn by the hotel’s housekeeper, is pushed under the door of Room 132.

Listen to the launch episode of series 3 of Gone to Timbuktu — a podcast on the art of travel, which opens with ‘The Finest Hotel in Kabul’ - an extraordinary book and incisive prism on Afghanistan’s last half century, from the Soviet occupation to the rise of the Taliban. It’s a story told in lyrical, empathetic, textured detail by the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, Lyse Doucet. A must read. A great listen. From a woman for whom truth, not sensation, is everything, her book honouring Afghans who “have to get up every day and face the day and find an everyday kind of courage to carry on.”

Episode available now on all major streaming platforms.
www.gonetotimbuktu.com
Photo:

Gone To Timbuktu, Series 3, is now out!!!!

My first guest is the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent .doucet talking about her brilliant new book (and instant Sunday Times bestseller), ‘The Finest Hotel in Kabul.’

Lyse is the perfect person to open this new season, which is full of exceptional voices pushing at the boundaries: journalists, writers, poets, photographers, artists and filmmakers, each very different from the next, their work making us think in new ways about ‘the art of travel’.

The podcast is published every two weeks (more or less — I’ll break that rhythm when something exceptional pops up, or I’m on the road). You can find it on all major streaming platforms, and via the podcast website, www.gonetotimbuktu.com.

Series images are by — my longtime friend and collaborator. The podcast is sponsored by . It’s also supported by   and . And , who give me the space to record.

For more info, see link in bio. And please share! Gone to Timbuktu is such a great community of passionate people, growing organically, episode by episode. So thank you x

 

I’ve just come out of a teaching week in Devon. Quite by chance, our first session chimed with the autumn equinox — that moment in time when the Sun appears directly above the Equator.  It’s the “equal night”, when light and darkness are in perfect balance.

We listened to a recording of Ted Hughes read ‘The Harvest Moon’, “Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.// And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.” All this talk of equinox made me think of “the fertile void” — a space my friend, the author and psychotherapist , explained on a walk a couple of years ago, describing that electric pause between the withdrawal from one phase, and the sensation of a new one starting. Not a void of nothing, but a quiet place for beholding ‘the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is” [Wallace Stevens’ line - which I love].

As it always does, the teaching got me thinking: for me, the fertile void is also manifested by place — in my experience (shared by my colleague and friend, photographer ), represented by two lakes that have had a powerful effect on our work: Lake , which sits at the heart of my first book, ‘The Lost Pianos of Siberia’, and Lake , which anchors my second, ‘A Training School for Elephants’. The two deepest freshwater lakes in the world both sit on tectonic rifts in the middle of a continent. Even today, their depths lie beyond our knowing. Their imaginative, spiritual pull is intoxicating .It’s a topic I’ll be weaving into an illustrated lecture I’m giving tomorrow evening in London, at the Royal Geographical Society .

So here are some images for those who won’t be there (for those who aren’t members already, you might want to join the RGS - with lectures available online and in person).