Levison Wood Popular Books
Levison Wood Biography & Facts
Major Levison James Wood, , VR (born 5 May 1982) is a British Army officer and explorer. He is best known for his extended walking expeditions in Africa, Asia, and Central America. He has also undertaken numerous other overland journeys, including a foot crossing of Madagascar and mountain climbing in Iraq. He documents his journeys through books, documentaries, and photography. Life The son of teachers Levison Wood and Janice, née Curzon, Wood was born on 5 May 1982 at the North Staffordshire Royal Infirmary in Hartshill, Staffordshire. He grew up in nearby Forsbrook and was educated at Painsley Catholic College, before obtaining an honours degree in history at the University of Nottingham. He was commissioned as an officer into the Parachute Regiment on 13 April 2006 where he spent four years, serving in Afghanistan in Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul. Wood was promoted to Captain on 13 October 2008. He left the army in April 2010, took up a career in writing and photography, and has become a bestselling author. He has extensive experience in travel and exploration in over 100 countries and in 2011 was made a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He is an elected Fellow of the Explorers Club in New York, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a visiting Fellow of The Business School and holds honorary doctorates at Staffordshire University and The University of Nottingham. Wood acts as a patron and ambassador for a number of charities including UNICEF, the Tusk Trust, The Glacier Trust and the ABF The Soldiers' Charity. He rejoined the army in 2012, serving as a reservist Major in the 77th Brigade. In March 2024 Wood was appointed as Chancellor of Staffordshire University, taking up position on the 1st May. Overland expeditions The expedition to walk the length of the Nile was inspired by the explorers John Hanning Speke, Richard Francis Burton, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley. Wood was accompanied by numerous guides, journalists (including Matthew Power), and friends along the different stages of the route. The expedition was commissioned into a television programme for Channel 4 that aired in January 2015, and Wood detailed the trip in his book Walking the Nile. Power died during the programme from severe heat stroke. Wood was forced to abandon a 450-mile (720 km) section in South Sudan due to heavy fighting caused by civil war. Beginning in December 2013, over the course of nine months, he undertook the first ever expedition to walk the entire length of the river Nile from the Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda. The expedition was commissioned as a four-part documentary series for Channel 4 in the UK. He also wrote a Sunday Times bestselling book detailing the expedition, Walking the Nile. In 2015, Wood embarked on another challenge: to walk the length of the Himalayas from Afghanistan to Bhutan, filming a documentary series and writing another book about the experience, which was published in January 2016. In September 2017 he began his most ambitious challenge to date: a full circumnavigation of the Arabian Peninsula: travelling from Syria, through Iraq, the Gulf, crossing part of the Empty Quarter desert in Oman, traversing Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Holy Land to finish in Lebanon; an expedition totalling 5,000 miles (8,000 km). During the course of the journey, he was embedded with Iraqi troops fighting ISIS where he witnessed the liberation of Sharqat and also encountered Palestinian guerrillas and Hezbollah operatives. He visited the city of Palmyra which was then under Russian control. This journey was documented in the Discovery series Arabia With Levison Wood. Channel 4 broadcast Walking the Americas from January 2017, featuring an expedition from Mexico to Colombia. The channel then broadcast his journey along the Caucasus in the four-episode series From Russia to Iran: Crossing Wild Frontiers. In May 2020, Channel 4 commenced broadcasting Walking with Elephants, where Levison followed the 650-mile migration of elephants across Botswana. In August 2023, Levison presented Levison Wood: Walking with...; a three-part wildlife documentary series that aired on Channel 4. Awards Military Awards & Decorations Literary Awards Walking the Himalayas was voted "Adventure Travel Book of the Year" for 2016 at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards. Wood was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Staffordshire University in 2017 in recognition of his work as an explorer, writer and photographer. Bibliography 2015 – Walking the Nile 2016 – Walking the Himalayas: An Adventure of Survival and Endurance 2017 – Eastern Horizons: Hitchhiking the Silk Road 2017 – Walking the Americas 2018 – Arabia: A Journey Through The Heart of the Middle East 2019 – Incredible Journeys: Discovery, Adventure, Danger, Endurance ISBN 9781526360434 2020 - The Last Giants 2020 - Encounters: A Photographic Journey 2021 - The Art of Exploration 2022 - Endurance 2023 - Escape from Kabul References External links Official website Levison Wood at IMDb. Discover the Levison Wood popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Levison Wood books.
Best Seller Levison Wood Books of 2024
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Scoring At Half-Time
George BestMichael Parkinson: 'What was the nearest to kickoff that you made love to a woman?'George Best: 'Er I think it was halftime actually'George Best was the first celeb...
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Tick Bite Fever
David BennunTick Bite Fever is the unconventional memoir of a very unconventional childhood. In the early Seventies, Dave Bennun's family transplanted themselves from Swindon to the wilds of K...
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Journey To The Sea
Gil McNeil, Hugo Tagholm & Sarah BrownWhether it is memories of childhood holidays or exotic fantasies of faraway places, a sea and its coast forms the most evocative of landscapes. Combining elements of romance, dange...
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Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans
Hunter Davies'I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?'Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and s...
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A Loo with a View
Luke BarclayThe toilet it's small, functional and using it usually involves staring at a door. But for the water closet connoisseur, there are a handful of places where the loo is an area of ...
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Plats du Jour
William BlackThere is more than a slight malaise in the air these days about French food and cooking. While the rest of the world delights in the intricacies of molecular gastronomy and even Br...
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Life on the Golden Horn
Mary Wortley MontaguTravelling through the wartorn Balkans with her husband on what proved to be a wholly useless diplomatic mission to Constantinople, Mary Wortley Montagu (16891762) left a vivid, in...
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My son, my son
Douglas GalbraithWhat do you do when your wife abducts your children? This was the question facing Douglas Galbraith when, in 2003, he returned home to Scotland from a few days' work in London. The...
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Land Rover
Ben FogleAs quintessentially British as a plate of fish and chips or a British Bulldog, the boxy, utilitarian Land Rover Defender has become an iconic part of what it is to be British.It is...
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How Cav Won the Green Jersey
Ned BoultingThis is not a 100,000word, minutebyminute, blowbyblow account of the 2011 Tour de France.This is not the story of Cadel Evans.This is not the story of Alberto Contador, Andy Schlec...
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Tomorrow You Die
Andy CooganAndy Coogan was born in Glasgow in 1917, the oldest child of poor Irish immigrants. He was tipped for Olympic glory, but a promising running career was interrupted by war service. ...
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Tomaz Humar
Bernadette McDonaldIn August, 2005, Tomaž Humar was trapped on a narrow ledge at 5900 metres on the formidable Rupal Face of Nanga Parbat. He had been attempting a new route, directly up the middle o...
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The Boss
John BuddenThe sudden death of Gordon W. Richards in late September 1998 brought a premature end to a legendary training career which had seen him rise from obscurity to national fame as mast...
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The Final Call
Leo HickmanNo industry in the world employs more people or is the world's largest foreign currency earner than tourism. Long billed as the cleanest industry for developing countries to invest...
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In The Footsteps Of Alexander The Great
Michael WoodMichael Wood retraces Alexander the Greats amazing journey from Greece to India, searching for the truth behind the legend and experiencing the tremendous scale of his achievements...
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Wainwright
Martin WainwrightWainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes is a celebration of the British landscape, and it tells the remarkable story of Alfred Wainwright who in 1952 decided to hand draw a series ...
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Irish Male At Home And Abroad
Joseph O'ConnorThe Irish Male at Home and Abroad is the hilarious sequel to Joe O'Connor's bestseller The Secret World of the Irish Male. From flirting lessons in downtown Manhattan to being offe...
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Encounters
Levison WoodJoin Sunday Times bestselling author, awardwinning explorer and photographer Levison Wood on his extraordinary journeys around the world vividly revealed in his first photography ...
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Against the Flow
Tom Fort'You have to be on your guard when you go back to special places. You may be able to locate them easily enough on the map, but maps tell only one story. Times change and places and...
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My 1001 Nights
Alice MorrisonTV presenter, writer and adventurer Alice Morrison gives her own unique and personal insight into Morocco, her home for 1001 nights. When Alice Morrison headed out to Morocco, it w...
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Alive and Kicking
David BryceFrom running with the infamous Calton Tongs to running Calton Athletic, David Bryce's life story is a remarkable account of crime, violence, alcoholism and drug addiction in Glasgo...
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The Hike
Don ShawFreddy, Phil and Don are three grumpy old men, travelling at various speeds in the slow lane of retirement, at a loss to understand the mad modern world around them.Their chosen me...
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100 Days On Holy Island
Peter MortimerIt was the worst winter in a decade, the winter of footandmouth, when island power cuts ran for up to 72 hours and two days before Peter Mortimer's planned departure, his fath...
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The Cloud Garden
Paul Winder & Tom Hart DykeThe Darién Gap is a place of legend. The only break in the PanAmerican highway, which runs from Alaska to the tip of South America, it is an almost impregnable strip of swamp, jung...
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Never Mind the Bullocks
Vanessa AbleA Scotsman NonFiction Book of the Year Vanessa Able wanted a truly independent Indian adventure, but nothing prepared her for the noise, chaos and terror of driving 10,000 km aroun...
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India Booms
John FarndonThe ancient birthplace of some of the world's major religions and now a modern nuclear power, India is experiencing spectacular economic growth. In twentyfive years its population ...
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Gypsy Bride
Sam Skye Lee'I felt like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and all the other fairytale princesses, and Pat was my Prince Charming.'Sam Skye Lee had often thought about getting married, b...
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Found in Translation
Duncan MaddenFound in Translation: The Unexpected Origins of Place Names unravels the tangled threads of history and etymology to uncover the strange, intriguing and enlightening stories that h...
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SAS Operation Storm
Roger Cole & Richard BelfieldOPERATION STORM is the inside story told by those who took part of the greatest secret war in SAS history. The tipping point, Mirbat, South Oman, 19 July 1972 is one of the least...
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American Notes
Charles Dickens'Like Shakespeare, Dickens was able to embrace a whole world' John MortimerWhen Charles Dickens set out for America in 1842, he was the most famous man of his day to make the journ...
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The Man Who Cycled the Americas
Mark BeaumontIn 2008, Mark Beaumont smashed the world record for cycling around the world, by an astonishing 81 days. His race against the clock took him through the toughest terrain and the mo...
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Phra Farang
Phra Peter PannapadipoAt fortyfive, successful businessman Peter Robinson gave up his comfortable life in London to ordain as a Buddhist monk in Bangkok. But the new path he had chosen was not always as...
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Defying Gravity
Roger McGoughIn this evocative and personal collection of poems Roger McGough comes to terms with painful memories as well as confronting fears that are universal. Here he remembers his father ...
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Arctic Diary
Sam Branson & Richard BransonIt's hardly a surprise to discover that Sam Branson has a love of adventure and a real concern about our future in a world where the climate is changing rapidly. Journeying into th...
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Cool for Qat
Peter MortimerWhen author Peter Mortimer was commissioned to write a play about a littleknown riot between Yemeni and British seamen at Mill Dam, South Shields, in 1930, he decided to take the l...