Back Stories: Personal tales from a lifetime of travel

Back Stories is a collection of more than thirty, highly personal traveller's tales, embracing adventure, comedy, disaster, romance, stupidity and a miscellany of mishaps, spanning more than five decades on the road.


They range from being in Boston during 9/11, weathering a storm while sailing in Croatia, travelling the backroads of Kerry in a horse-drawn Romany caravan, being thrown in jail in Ecuador, experiencing a scary scuba dive in the Caribbean and finding work as a film extra in Athens. The longest story covers a year spent in a remote farmhouse in Calabria, living with a family who subsisted on produce they grew on a series of terraces. It portrays a way of life that is fast disappearing on the Mediterranean.


From low budget journeys as a student, to longer intervals living in Italy, Switzerland, Vermont and New York, David Wickers has spent much of his life travelling. In his mid-thirties he discovered that, as a professional travel writer, he could be paid for his passion. For 17 years he was Chief Travel Correspondent on The Sunday Times and is currently Travel Editor for Good Housekeeping. He has received numerous awards, including being selected on four occasions as Travel Writer of the Year. David is married with three children, and lives in North London.