Summary
From acclaimed writer AA Gill comes this collection of travel pieces selected from his monthly column in Australian Gourmet Traveller - 'AA Gill is away'. Witty, acerbic and often moving, these pieces are far from standard travel writing fare. Touching on tourism, airports, world cuisine and countries including Madagascar, Iceland and Albania, Gill's perspective is often controversial and always unique. He ponders Italy's ability to turn organised crime into a tourist attraction, stumbles upon lobster-shaped coffins in Ghana, contemplates the Darwinian drive of bastardised dishes around the globe, explains why Johannesburg is the luckiest place in the unluckiest continent and considers the great black lake of tears that immigration leaves behind. With an introduction and extra piece written exclusively for this collection, Here and There showcases the very best of Gill's hilarious and insightful travel writing, and is a must read for anyone who is curious about the world we live in.
Adrian Anthony Gill was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on June 28, 1954. He studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London and at the Slade School, but did not graduate from either. A series of odd jobs followed as he descended into alcoholism. After entering a rehabilitation program in 1984 and joining Alcoholics Anonymous, he taught cooking classes. He wrote a short article about his recovery for Tatler's Good Rehab Guide and was hired as a food writer and essayist.
In 1993, he was hired by The Sunday Times. He wrote about television, travel, and politics before taking over Table Talk, the newspaper's weekly restaurant column. His travel writing and foreign reporting were collected in A. A. Gill Is Away and A. A. Gill Is Further Away. His other books included Sap Rising, The Ivy: The Restaurant and Its Recipes, Le Caprice, Breakfast at the Wolseley: Recipes from London's Favorite Restaurant, Grand Cafe, The Golden Door: Letters to America, and Table Talk: Sweet and Sour, Salt and Bitter. His autobiography, Pour Me: A Life, was published in 2015. He died from lung cancer on December 10, 2016 at the age of 62.
(Bowker Author Biography)