Lonely Planet Mexico 13th Ed.: 13th Edition [Paperback]

John Noble finds life as a travel writer the only way to satisfy his endless curiosity about the planet he lives on. After a Cambridge University degree in philosophy and English literature, he embarked upon a newspaper career that led him from Lancashire to Yorkshire to the Fleet Street "qualities," but increasing interruptions for explorations of the globe soon found John searching for a way to combine writing with travel. He paid his way around southeast Asia by writing special reports for the august Financial Times International Coal Report and sub-editing for the Far Eastern Economic Review, before Lonely Planet commissioned him to update its Sri Lanka guide. LP has kept John extremely busy ever since, chiefly (despite that Asiatic start) in the Latin world and the former Soviet Union. He has played major roles in eight editions of LP's Mexico, five of Spain, four of Andalucía, two of Mexico City, and one each of Guatemala, Belize and Brazil. With just one co-author (John King), John pioneered LP's coverage of the world's biggest nation with the epic USSR guide, a two-year project devoted to a country that decided to abolish itself while the book was at the printers in 1991. John then turned to writing guides to the Soviet successor states: Baltic States, Central Asia and Russia, Ukraine & Belarus. With his long experience of the above regions and of LP's modus operandi, John has been coordinating author of nearly all the above titles. John grew up in the cool, green valley of the River Ribble in northern England, which is still his favourite place on the planet, but his most memorable single trip was a trek from Ladakh to Zanskar in the Indian Himalaya, one of those regions where the earth comes a bit closer to whatever's beyond. Back on that first trip to Sri Lanka John met Australian Susan Forsyth, now also a long-standing LP author. They married in 1989 and for the past decade have lived in a southern Spanish hill village with their now-teenage offspring, Isabella and Jack. One of the things John likes most about writing for LP is the chance to get to grips with many of the subjects that fascinate him most, including history, the arts, wildlife and conservation. He has written in-depth sections on topics ranging from Spanish flamenco and Islamic architecture to wildlife and conservation in Brazil, Mexico and Andalucía, soccer in Brazil and the folk arts of Mexico. Lonely Planet's demands have kept John's hands pretty full for a long time but over the years he has also found time to write about ancient British mystical sites for the Times, soccer for the Guardian, Mexican travel for Livingetc and Planeta.com, and a range of issues from education to globalization, in English and Spanish, for the bilingual magazine El Gato Verde in Spain. He's also a photographer whose shots have been published in many LP titles and numerous other publications.