‘Travel is medicine’: how the Sherborne Travel Writing Festival can inspire our trips

Colin Thubron, Sara Wheeler and other celebrated writers will be in Dorset to explain why travel literature still has an important role to play despite the climate crisis and hardening of borders

These past few years have brought dramatic changes to our lives: Brexit, Covid lockdowns, climate change, soaring energy costs and the largest, most brutal war in Europe since 1945. While our horizons have drawn in, travel writers have continued to reach out, rediscovering and reinterpreting the world for a new age. From 14-16 April, 10 of the UK’s finest travel writers will come to Sherborne in Dorset to transport readers, listeners and both armchair and intrepid travellers alike towards the four corners of the globe.

The Sherborne Travel Writing Festival will be the first festival devoted exclusively to travel literature to be held in the UK in recent years. At its heart is the idea – and the timely theme – of reaching for the horizon. But how to justify a celebration of travel literature at a time when difficult personal finances and climate change loom over many of our travel plans?