Tim Mackintosh-Smith on the settled v the wanderer; on capital letters and capital cities; on his hometown San’a; on mesmerising language, the heft of translation and sonorous tripe; on libraries, scud missiles and alabaster window panes — with TWBC

Welcome to the travel/literary podcast The Wandering Book Collector with host Michelle Jana Chan. This is a series of conversations with writers exploring what's informed their books and their lives around themes of movement, memory, sense of place, borders, identity, belonging and home.In this edition, I speak with the writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith to discuss his latest book, Arabs: A 3,000-year history of peoples, tribes and empires.His body of work includes: Yemen, Travels in Dictionary Land; a trilogy on the 14th-century traveller Ibn Baṭṭūṭah who, in his words, may well be the most widely travelled human before the age of steam; as well as completed translations, and a work of fiction Bloodstone set in the year 1368, as the Alhambra in Granada was being completed.Please consider supporting your local bookshop.The Wandering Book Collector would like to thank the supporter of this podcast:Abercrombie & Kent — Creating unique, meticulously planned journeys into hard-to-reach wildernesses and cultures.If you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love you to leave a rating or a review. To learn about future editions, please subscribe or hit “follow” on your podcast app of choice. Thank you for listening! For more on the podcast, book recs, what books to pack for where’s next, and who’s up next, I’m across socials @michellejchan. I’d love to hear from you.And if you’ve missed any, do catch up. From Janine di Giovanni to Bernardine Evaristo to Afua Hirsch to Carla Power to Maaza Mengiste to Kapka Kassabova to Sara Wheeler to Brigid Delaney to Horatio Clare to Rebecca Mead to Preti Taneja to Kathryn D. Sullivan to Emmanuel Jal to Jennifer Steil to Winnie M Li to Mona Arshi.All credit for sound effects goes to the artists and founders of Freesound.org and Zapsplat.com. All credit for music goes to the artists and founders of Soundstripe.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.