A wonderful travel book, where the thrilling historical review of the distant past is followed by vibrant recordings and descriptions of the present. History, monuments, art, society, economy, industry, people, cities, universities, personalities, models, youth - they are all there, shining with bright and dark colors before the reader's eyes.

With two additional texts by the author, about England and Cyprus and about "the bluebird of freedom" which, once it emerges from the borders of England, transforms into a bloodthirsty imperialist vulture.

"Written in the early days of World War II, 'Traveling: England' is perhaps the most moving of all Kazantzakis's travel books. In Spain, Greece, China, and Japan, he was searching for something he already knew: a reflection of himself in different landscapes. In England, he examines something he feels is foreign, a society that fascinates him with its strict class structure and sense of history, but at the same time repels him with its lack of spontaneity and its fear of emotions."

"Precisely because he found England so infuriating, because he was so astonished by the fact that the country that birthed the genius of Shakespeare and held the power of a vast empire was simultaneously this small, serene, orderly island society, Kazantzakis wrote some of his finest travel notes about England - the brilliant and always profound observations of a great writer and a uniquely perceptive traveler."