I now think everyone should travel with Stanley Stewart across Asia. He is funny, clever but above all, he is believable.

Nicholas Murray's book is also good on bringing to life those travellers whose pride, racism and heavy prose make their own books unreadable today.

… suddenly, we are up, up and away, on a genuine quadruple track Tim Mackintosh-Smith roller-coaster of historical, linguistic, geographic and spiritual inquiry.

it was not until 1950 that he established a base in the Moroccan port of Tangier, complete with an open-top jaguar and a uniformed Moroccan chauffeur.

Mackintosh-Smith is on a quest 'to pick up the vibrations of his age, to echo sound the centuries'.

... like inspiring pin-pricks in the night sky, there are still travel books that keep shining and have kept generation after generation of readers enthralled.