Books by Philip Briggs

Philip Briggs has been exploring the highways, byways and backwaters of Africa since 1986, when he spent several months backpacking on a shoestring from Nairobi to Cape Town. His association with Bradt started in 1991 when he wrote the first guidebook to South Africa to be published after the release of Nelson Mandela. Over the rest of the 1990s, Philip wrote a series of pioneering Bradt guides to destinations that were then - and in some cases still are - otherwise practically uncharted by the travel publishing industry. These included the first dedicated guidebooks to Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana and Rwanda, all of which are now in their 4th-7th edition. More recently he wrote the only guidebook to Somaliland, also published by Bradt. He first visited The Gambia in the late 1990s as part of an extended trip to West Africa and returned there twice, most recently in 2013. He has visited more than two dozen African countries in total and written about most of them for specialist travel and wildlife magazines including Africa Birds & Birding, Africa Geographic, BBC Wildlife, Travel Africa and Wanderlust. This edition has been updated by travel writer and photographer Simon Fenton. After an early career as a biologist, he lived, worked and travelled in Asia for several years before returning to the UK to 'settle down', where he set up the award-winning social enterprise StreetShine. After a perfect storm of events re-ignited his wanderlust, he eventually found himself in Senegal, where he and his Senegalese partner, Khady, built - and run - an eco-guesthouse in Abene, a few miles south of the Gambian border. Simon was a member of a Jola family, a tribe widespread across The Gambia and southern Senegal, meaning that he travelled regularly across the region with a particular interest in documenting the local Jola culture. Tragically, in May 2017, Simon was killed in a car accident in Senegal. Simon was a contributor to the Bradt guide to Senegal and published two books chronicling his adventures in the country: Squirting Milk at Chameleons and Chasing Hornbills.