Hilary Bradt in conversation with Mike Unwin Taking the risk: My adventures in travel and publishing

About

This talk is based on Hilary Bradts engaging, insightful, amusing and sometimes alarming memoir about serendipitous adventures in travel and publishing. A travel industry trail-blazer who co-founded Bradt Guides, Hilary looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters and success.

From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset.
Barely into her twenties, Hilary Bradt thumbed lifts around the Middle East for three months before spending four years working and travelling in the US. Between 1973 and 1976 Hilary explored, and worked in, South America and Africa with her then husband George, often journeying through literally uncharted territory in their quest to find new hiking routes. The discovery of an ancient trail to Machu Picchu in Peru unexpectedly inspired their first guidebook.
From 1977, the pair wrote several backpacking guides, and set up Bradt Guides. This was just as well, because Hilarys career in occupational therapy ended when potential employers noticed that time taken off for travel exceeded periods of employment. During the 1980s, Bradt Guides grew and became successful but that didn't stop Hilary travelling, including as a tour leader.
Join Hilary as she relives in detail the rigours of travel before the days of the internet or mobile phones, including smuggling her husband across an international border and frequently getting arrested despite efforts to be responsible tourists. Learn how Hilarys lack of experience made the early days of publishing quite unlike those of any other successful publisher.
Hilary Bradts first 25 years of running Bradt Guides was combined with leading adventure and natural history tours to South America, Africa and Madagascar. Today, Bradt Guides has more than 200 titles in print. In addition to an MBE, Bradt has been given four lifetime achievement awards and was made an Officer of the National Order of Madagascar for services to tourism.
Mike Unwin is an award-winning writer who specialises in travel and the natural world, with a particular focus on Africa. He has published 40 books for both adults and children which include the Bradt Guide to Southern African Wildlife (Bradt) and Around the World in 80 Birds. As a journalist, he writes regularly write for numerous leading publications, including The Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian, BBC Wildlife and Travel Africa.