Jeremy Seal writes non-fiction books which combine travel and history, often taking the culture of Turkey – a life-long interest – as their inspiration. His books include: A Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat (Picador, 1995); The Snakebite Survivors Club: Travels Among Serpents (Picador, 1999); The Wreck at Sharpnose Point (Picador, 2001); Santa: A Life (Picador, 2004); and Meander: East to West Along a Turkish River (Chatto, 2012), which won the British Guild of Travel Writers’ Best Narrative Travel Book. Jeremy read English Literature at Exeter University before teaching English in Turkey. He returned to Britain for a spell in publishing before going full-time as a writer in 1989. He has since written extensively for the travel pages of many newspapers and magazines, including the Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph and Condé Nast Traveller. He has tutored for the Arvon Foundation and regularly lectures and guides on cultural tours of Turkey. Jeremy lives in Bath with his family.
How did you get started traveling?
My father was posted to Cairo in 1981 when I was at a formative age. I spent many of my university holidays there, and loved it. I think the experience of Cairo prompted me to become a teacher of English in Ankara, knowing that the job would provide plenty of traveling opportunities.
How did you get started writing?
Started writing while I was in Turkey and continued on my return to London and a job in publishing where I gradually worked out that rather than publish I was really interested in writing. My contacts certainly helped, I think, in getting me early gigs for the books and latterly travel pages of the national Saturday and Sunday papers.
What do you consider your first “break” as a writer?
Not sure; I think it helped that there was a great demand for travel journalism in the late 80s and early 90s. I was never short of work. It also helped that Turkey was emerging as a travel destination, and that I was able to establish myself as one of the authorities on the country’s tourism scene.
As a traveler and fact/story gatherer, what is your biggest challenge on the road?
That the best material derives from independent, and therefore unsupported travel, while press trips, though comfortable and less painful on the personal purse, rarely deliver up great stories.
What is your biggest challenge in the research and writing process?
That I am an inveterate, and therefore time-wasting, re-worker of copy. I wish I could accept that the copy editor will sort out the tweaking…
What is your biggest challenge from a business standpoint?
That I’ve never made more than the minimum from writing. That looks like leaving me very short of funds as I age. The point, perhaps, is that I never conceived of my writing as a business.
Have you ever done other work to make ends meet?
Plenty. The tours that I now organize and lead are a case in point; it’s another way of enthusing about Turkey, in person and to a smaller demographic, which pays rather better than writing about the country.
What travel authors or books might you recommend and/or have influenced you?
Oh, endless. The Way of the World by Nicolas Bouvier. Anything by Patrick Leigh Fermor or Peter Matthiessen. Travels with a Donkey by Robert Louis Stevenson is the daddy of the genre, a book of such insight, curiosity and good humor. I love William Least Heat Moon. I love Edmondo de Amicis’ amazing book on Istanbul for its prodigious detail. Other Turkey books are love are Christopher de Bellaigue’s Rebel Land and Jason Goodwin’s book about walking to Istanbul.
What advice and/or warnings would you give to someone who is considering going into travel writing?
I think the market is for tips – best hotels, good places for street food – rather than deeper cultural insight. That’s the stuff I love, but there’s no place for it in the media, at least not in the media I’m familiar with. So it’s got to be a book, and getting published these days is hard. Do it, but only if the idea of doing anything else leaves you feeling desolate.
What is the biggest reward of life as a travel writer?
A free mind. The freedom to pursue thoughts which are entirely one’s own.
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