What is Journeys Beyond Borders?
Welcome to Journeys Beyond Borders. I’ll be using this weekly newsletter to share new writing with you about places that I love and return to for journalism, research and simple enjoyment. As with my books, the geographical spread will be from Central and Eastern Europe to Central Asia though very occasionally we will stray further afield.
Each dispatch will be centred around a single destination. It could be a café in Istanbul that tells a wider story, or a village in Kazakhstan that reveals an underreported slice of history. It will be apparent from each post, too, how ideas, flavours, histories and cultures move freely beyond the rigidity of manmade borders.
Food - such an effective passport to other places - will often have a part to play. As an additional bridge to these locales for each issue I will include a recipe as a way to enrich the story and to help us taste the journey.
In that sense, the newsletters are quite similar to my recent memoir Cold Kitchen and my ‘colour trilogy’ of cookbooks that are illustrated travelogues with recipes: Black Sea (2018), Red Sands (2020) and Green Mountains (2025).
So if you like my books, please do sign up.
Here’s how it works
There are two versions of this newsletter. The lite version, and the connoisseur version.
The lite version is free. If you subscribe to the free version, you can read my Journeys Beyond Borders newsletter once a month, plus you’ll get to see a short preview of everything else.
The connoisseur version is paid for and with this package you get much, much more:
-A Journeys Beyond Borders long-read every other Wednesday
-View Finder or Field Notes every Monday
-Access to the entire archive
-Ability to comment or ask questions
View Finder is a photograph from the region that is remarkable and tells a broader story. Contemporary and historical, some by me, some by others.
Field Notes is your cultural calendar and arts diary for everything related to the region including forthcoming talks and art exhibitions, new books and album releases. So expect what is happening in galleries and museums in cities such as NYC, Paris and London but also Bishkek, Istanbul and Warsaw.
About me
For the past fifteen years I have worked as a writer and during that time I’ve had five books published: Samarkand, Black Sea, Red Sands, and, most recently, Green Mountains. My memoir, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Journeys is also out now (paperback, May 2025).
I have also written forewords and introductory essays to several books, including They Went To Portugal by Rose Macaulay (Daunt Books) and Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand by Ella Christie (John Murray).
My focus is on food, travel, history and culture and through my work I aim to foster a better understanding of cultures - primarily in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia - that are still under-represented in western media. Publications I occasionally contribute to include the Financial Times, The Guardian, Cornucopia, and The Times Literary Supplement. I have also documented some of my experiences on BBC Radio 4’s From Our Own Correspondent.
Over the years, my books have won various awards. In 2020, Red Sands won the André Simon Award for the best food book, and was a ‘book of the year’ for The New Yorker. The book was written as a reimagining of travel writing, using food as an exploration of Central Asia and a means to tell stories of the lives of people there as well as issues around environmentalism, migration and nation building. Its predecessor, Black Sea, was a multi-award-winning title, winning the 2020 Art of Eating Prize and the John Avery Award. Black Sea explored the interconnecting culinary cultures between three great cities across the Europe/Asia border: Odesa, Istanbul and Trabzon. Samarkand, my first book, was a Guardian book of the year and went on to win the Guild of Food Writers Food and Travel Award in 2017.
My recent book, Cold Kitchen, has recently been selected as a "best summer read" for the Financial Times and The Observer.
I’m quite active on social media and you can find me as ‘edentravels’ on Instagram and Twitter.
