Rory Maclean on the cross-cultural geography of heaven

How do you capture two and a half thousand years in a couple hundred pages? Today’s guest managed to hit the highs and lows of Japan’s long history while peppering his account with literature, culture, religion and those subtle ways of seeing the world that are distinctly Japanese. It’s the perfect introduction for anyone visiting the country, and an entertaining reminder for those of us whose Japanese history reading was mostly confined to university courses. But don’t expect this episode to provide a chronological overview of the history of Japan. Why rehash that here when you can read it? I’m getting the answers to my own questions about the past of the country that I’ve made my home. Christopher Harding is the author of A Short History of Japan, Japan Story: In Search of a Nation 1850 to the Present, The Light of Asia, and other books. He teaches at the University of Edinburgh and is a regular contributor to The Sunday Times, The London Review of Books, and UnHerd. We spoke about the central drama of Japanese history, everyday life during a century and a half of civil war, and how a new form of Buddhism helped reshape the arts. Personal Landscapes relies on the support of listeners like you to keep going. Please consider joining my Member's Club on Substack, where you'll find show notes for each episode, book reviews, reading-related videos, and more. You’ll be supporting an independent ad-free podcast that publishes carefully curated conversations like this one, backed by decades of reading. Go to https://www.personallandscapespodcast.com/p/start-here Follow my travels — and buy my books — on https://ryanmurdock.com/

Thank you to all those who submitted questions. There were more than I expected. I hope you find this interesting. Watch the video for: * an update on the future of Personal Landscapes — and a change in direction * behind the scenes glimpses into what it takes to produce each episode * questions about my own writing and travels * travel advice * …and more I’m happy to do another one of these anytime. I didn’t realize so many people were interested. Please don’t hesitate to suggest it — or to remind me — in a comment or on the chat.

We’re talking about Canada today, a place I know a little something about. My homeland is the subject of Paul Theroux’s newest travel book. Like Canada, True North is vast and it covers too much ground to summarize in a podcast. This is a glimpse into the creation of the book, with many digressions along the way. Paul Theroux is the author of some 20 travel books including True North: On The Road in Canada, The Great Railway Bazaar and Dark Star Safari, and 33 works of fiction including The Vanishing Point and The Mosquito Coast. He’s also been my favourite writer for as long as I can remember. We spoke about his Quebecois ancestors, the existence of Can-Lit, and the potential threat of isolated ethno-bubbles to the future of the country. Personal Landscapes relies on the support of listeners like you to keep going. Please consider joining my Member's Club on Substack, where you'll find show notes for each episode, book reviews, reading-related videos, and more. You’ll be supporting an independent ad-free podcast that publishes carefully curated conversations like this one, backed by decades of reading. Go to https://www.personallandscapespodcast.com/p/start-here Follow my travels — and buy my books — on https://ryanmurdock.com/

Jan Morris seemed to live multiple lives. She was a soldier at the end of the Second World War, and a globetrotting journalist with a knack for turning up in the middle of what would become historic events. She was a man — James Morris — and then a woman, undergoing gender-reassignment surgery in Casablanca at the age of forty-six. She hated being called a travel writer but she wrote remarkable books about place, and was one of the finest descriptive writers of her time. She also wrote celebrated histories, including the Pax Brittanica Trilogy, an elegy to the British Empire that captured the period in a kaleidoscope of incidents and characters, steeped in melancholy and a sense of decline. The quality of her work is uneven. Money troubles led her to recycle newspaper articles into books that were often formulaic and disjointed. But the best of her work will stand among our greatest writing on place. The life behind that work was rife with contradictions. Morris preached the virtues of kindness, but according to her children she was a terrible parent, cold and cruel. Others have described her as a narcissist, a fabulist, and a class snob who told stories that inflated her family origins. Who better to uncover the complexities of this twentieth-century icon than a writer who excels at both biography and travel writing? Sara Wheeler is the author of Jan Morris: A Life. We spoke about Jan Morris’s iconic writing style, her late-life obsession with Welsh nationalism, and the unreconcilable sense of longing at the heart of her work. Personal Landscapes relies on the support of listeners like you to keep going. Please consider joining my Member's Club on Substack, where you'll find show notes for each episode, book reviews, reading-related videos, and more. You’ll be supporting an independent ad-free podcast that publishes carefully curated conversations like this one, backed by decades of reading. Go to https://www.personallandscapespodcast.com/p/start-here Follow my travels — and buy my books — on https://ryanmurdock.com/ You can listen to Personal Landscapes: Conversations on Books About Place on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Podbean, Google Podcasts, Audible, PlayerFM, and TuneIn + Alexa. Please subscribe, and rate the podcast or leave a review. Your support is greatly appreciated.

George Forster is the most interesting 18th century explorer that I had never heard of. He traveled the South Pacific on Captain James Cook’s second voyage at age seventeen, sailing through icy waters tantalizingly close to undiscovered Antarctica. The common roots of those languages and cultures led him to develop a theory of Polynesian migration two centuries before it became the scientific consensus. The prevailing European notion at the time was also one of racial superiority, but Forster saw the peoples he met as equals and believed they had something of value to teach him. The book he wrote about the journey made him a coveted dinner guest all over Europe. He was friends with Goethe, Benjamin Franklin and Mary Wollstonecraft, and he became a mentor to Alexander von Humboldt. But Forster’s later life was not a happy one, and his work was largely forgotten until today’s guest rescued him from obscurity. Andrea Wulf is the author of The Traveller: The Revolutionary Life of George Forster. We spoke about Forster’s remarkable Pacific journey, why his ideas were so far ahead of their time, and his unfortunate end.