Since its inception four years ago, the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival has celebrated travel writers as bridge builders; women and men who reach for the far horizon, who venture out from one little corner of the earth into the wide world, who connect and engage with the moment in an effort to understand different peoples, cultures and times. Empathy lies at the heart of their books, and the fundamental belief that through better understanding others we can counter the division and isolation of the present day. 

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Travel - and hence travel writing - are “fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts,” wrote Mark Twain over a century ago. Today it’s vital that those of us who can keep travelling, questioning, exploring - and writing. Please join 12 remarkable authors, the Sherborne Literary Society team and myself to cross borders, to build bridges and to draw together – on the page at least – our divided worlds. 

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Rory MacLean

Curator

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