Off the Map: Lost Spaces, Invisible Cities, Forgotten Islands, Feral Places and What They Tell Us About the World

'An absorbing book packed with remarkable facts... a joy to read'

`Alastair Bonnett's high-speed world tour of places and non-places whose stories would bring the most somnolent class to life. Bonnett zooms effortlessly around far-off spots - sometimes in person, more often via the internet - but he does not ignore those closer to home. Fizzingly entertaining and enlightening book.'

Bonnett dares us to rethink exploration in a world that has been fully charted, taking us from micronation Sealand - a forsaken sea fort claimed by a Brit as his own sovereign nation - to Arne, a Second World War decoy city that saved thousands of lives. Forty-seven fascinating essays prove why our topophilia can never be extinguished or sated and how these locations over insights into our history and society.

A fascinating delve into uncharted, forgotten and lost places. But it' s not just a trivia-tastic anthology of remote destinations but a nifty piece of psycho-geography, explaining our human need for these cartographical conundrums.

Bonnett dares us to rethink exploration in a world that has been fully charted, taking us from micronation Sealand - a forsaken sea fort claimed by a Brit as his own sovereign nation - to Arne, a Second World War decoy city that saved thousands of lives. Forty-seven fascinating essays prove why our topophilia can never be extinguished or sated and how these locations over insights into our history and society.

` Alastair Bonnett' s high-speed world tour of places and non-places whose stories would bring the most somnolent class to life. Bonnett zooms effortlessly around far-off spots - sometimes in person, more often via the internet - but he does not ignore those closer to home. Fizzingly entertaining and enlightening book.'

` Fearlessly explores the dark side of humanity while constantly challenging our conceptions of place, borders and boundaries, and how we as humans use locations and geography to define ourselves and the world around us. Importantly, Bonnett' s careful research and fascinating theories are complemented with passages of wonderfully written prose. A thought provoking triumph.'

` A mesmerising study of ambiguous temporary places.'

'An absorbing book packed with remarkable facts... a joy to read'

ALASTAIR BONNETT is Professor of Social Geography at Newcastle University. Previous books include Off the Map, What is Geography? and How to Argue. He has also contributed to history and current affairs magazines on a wide variety of topics, such as world population and radical nostalgia. Alastair was editor of the avant-garde, psychogeographical, magazine Transgressions: A Journal of Urban Exploration between 1994-2000. Alastair lives in Newcastle.