Redmond O'Hanlon

“'I hope to go on a great journey through the far northern forests', I said, liking the sound of the words, 'by dugout to the headwaters of the Motaba, where we'll abandon the boats, walk east through the swamp jungle and across the watershed to the Ibenga, take a chance on finding another canoe, and then, if we're lucky, paddle down to the Likoula aux Herbes and walk to the hidden lake, Lake Tele, where Mokele-mbembe, the Congo dinosaur, is said to live.'"
- Redmond O'Hanlon, No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo

ABOUT REDMOND O'HANLON

Redmond O’Hanlon is a British author and scholar of natural history, elected as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society of Literature.  He is best known in travel literature for harrowing journeys into some of the most remote and dangerous jungles in the world, an insatiable curiosity for flora and fauna, and a funny, modest, and self-deprecating writing style.  His first travelogue is perhaps his best, Into the Heart of Borneo (1984), which he followed with In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon (1988) and No Mercy: A Journey into the Heart of the Congo (1996).  O’Hanlon was a guest and presenter on a television program about Charles Darwin’s 1831 voyage aboard the HMS Beagle.  One of our favorite books was his story of his trip as a guest on a fishing trawler in the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic.  
PHOTO ATTRIBUTION: By Matthieu van den Berg (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A5 RECOMMENDED TRAVEL BOOKS - REDMOND O'HANLON

GREAT QUOTES:

“And at once I felt quesy.  And this, I said to myself, is only the movement of the boat against the quay; but come on, you'll get over it; don't be a wimp; it's only the stench of dead fish down there, and the lack of portholes in the cabin, and the smell of deep fry saturated into everything, and your bed made up with chip shop curtains..."
- Redmond O'Hanlon, Trawler

INTERESTING LINKS:

  • Listen to Redmond O'Hanlon discuss a number of topics, including why taking cocaine helped his writing, on a terrific website called Web of Stories.  Click here to learn more.
  • Read the Guardian's profile on Redmond O'Hanlon, published in 2003.

REDMOND O'HANLON ON THE VRPO BEAGLE PROGRAM