diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index 06dc410b..50c2b9f9 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ matrix:
           automake gtk-doc-tools
           gobject-introspection
           libfftw3-dev libjpeg-turbo8-dev
-          libpng12-dev libwebp-dev libtiff4-dev libxml2-dev
+          libpng12-dev libwebp-dev libtiff4-dev libexpat1-dev
           swig libmagick++-dev bc
           libcfitsio3-dev libgsl0-dev libmatio-dev
           liborc-0.4-dev liblcms2-dev libpoppler-glib-dev
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ matrix:
           automake gtk-doc-tools
           gobject-introspection
           libfftw3-dev libjpeg-turbo8-dev
-          libpng12-dev libwebp-dev libtiff4-dev libxml2-dev
+          libpng12-dev libwebp-dev libtiff4-dev libexpat1-dev
           swig libmagick++-dev bc
           libcfitsio3-dev libgsl0-dev libmatio-dev
           liborc-0.4-dev liblcms2-dev libpoppler-glib-dev
@@ -72,7 +72,7 @@ matrix:
         - brew install --ignore-dependencies gtk-doc
         - brew install
           gobject-introspection
-          fftw mozjpeg libexif
+          expat fftw mozjpeg libexif
           libpng webp 
           swig imagemagick
           cfitsio libmatio
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index bfc373ea..1f87611a 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -46,9 +46,10 @@ Untar, then in the libvips directory you should just be able to do:
 	$ ./configure
 
 Check the summary at the end of `configure` carefully. 
-libvips must have `build-essential`, `pkg-config`, `glib2.0-dev`.
+libvips must have `build-essential`, `pkg-config`, `glib2.0-dev`,
+`libexpat1-dev`.
 
-For the vips8 Python binding, you must have 
+For the vips8 Python binding, you must also have 
 `gobject-introspection`, `python-gi-dev`, and `libgirepository1.0-dev`.
 
 You'll need the dev packages for the file format support you