Billy Connolly: Journey to the Edge of the World

To have Billy Connolly as a personal tour guide through some of the world’s most dramatic landscapes—from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the fabled Northwest Passage – is to enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

With his idiosyncratic humour, Billy searches for the beauty of ordinariness and bumps into all manner of weird and wonderful people along the way, from the fiddle-playing scarecrow-maker to the septuagenarian pioneer who still lives as her ancestors did. He learns how not to be intimate with bears and how to pan for gold. He herds cattle, has a profound experience in a sweat lodge and attempts the finer complexities of the Inuit language. He jams with fellow musicians, kisses a cod and waxes lyrical about icebergs.

“Everybody thinks icebergs are white and like ice cream all the way through, but they’re not white at all, they’re blue, the most spectacular turquoise aquamarine blue, like Paul Newman’s eyes. Each one is like a huge piece of sensational jewellery, gliding along. They are alien in their surroundings – a bit like seeing a polar bear in the middle of Sauchiehall Street – but they have such presence and power; a drama all their own. I’d like to tow one up the Clyde or the Thames or the Tyne or the Mersey and let all the kids see it. In a decent world we should all be allowed to slide down one. They’re just made for sliding down especially on the inside, where there’s bound to be a big pool at the bottom of a wonderful slide you can land in with a Splosh!”

At this pivotal moment in history when this once isolated wilderness is about to be invaded by hordes of modern-day speculators, the inimitable Billy retraces the footsteps of romantics and nutters, the broken-hearted, those looking for love or just hoping to get rich. He leads us through this land’s incredible past and shares his optimism about the future.

Journey to the Edge of the World is more than just an informative and entertaining travel guide—it is time spent exclusively in the company of our most engaging national treasure.

ISBN 0755318854(978-075-531885-8)
RRP $49.99
Released April 2009

Billy Connolly travelled with Quark Expeditions aboard Akademik Ioffe