Good travel narratives get under the skin of a country. Lawrence Durrell’s masterful BITTER LEMONS and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s MANI are packed with more insight into the Greek character than a taverna full of Rough Guide oracles. Tim Parks’ ITALIAN NEIGHBOURS is unequalled in its revelations about Italian urban life. Tahir Shah is the best contemporary literary companion in Morocco. Travel literature also takes us to places that no one in their right mind would visit for a two week break. Joanna Kavenna’s THE ICE MUSEUM and Tim Butcher’s BLOOD RIVER transport readers up to the Arctic and down the Congo without spilling a drop of their pina coladas.

These days the book that I most often carry abroad is Nicolas Bouvier’s THE WAY OF THE WORLD, an exhilarating tale of a life-enhancing journey from Europe to the Khyber Pass in the 1950s. 'I dropped this wonderful moment into the bottom of my memory, like a sheet-anchor that one day I could draw up again,' Bouvier wrote after a chance encounter on the road. 'The bedrock of existence is not made up of the family, or work, or what others say and think of you, but of moments like this when you are exalted by a transcendent power that is more serene than love.'

Before leaving home William Dalrymple reads travel books ‘to stoke the fires of curiosity and wanderlust’. Yet while travelling he prefers to read novels, for example MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN on his first trip around India. Ryszard Kapuscinski on the other hand never went away without Herodotus. Alain de Botton took my first book STALIN’S NOSE on a summer cycling holiday around Holland. And Elenore Smith Bowen’s RETURN TO LAUGHTER is always in Dea Birkett’s carry-on bag. Her sensational travel diary, thinly disguised as a novel, is set in northern Nigeria. In one scene, which Dea has read countless times all over the world, Smith Bowen, shaken by the strangeness surrounding her, takes out an elegant evening gown and a copy of Jane Austen, then settles down for a night in her mud hut in the bush, reminding herself where she came from. It’s a book about measuring ones own values against those of a foreign place, as well as a guidebook to a traveller's heart.

Today in the Guardian Unlimited I’m asking readers which travel book – and guide — they won’t leave home without this summer. If you’d like to share your must-reads, please join the blog by clicking here.

I also want to let you know that the mighty Woodhopper, the light, white flying machine which I hand-built on Crete, found the perfect new home last week. A pleasant, humble and deliciously dotty enthusiast, Martin Aubrey bought it for his extensive ultralight collection (he already owns FIFTY other ‘antique’ aeroplanes). He and his bubbly and tolerant wife Penny helped me to extract it from my Dorset garage and load it onto their trailer. The Woodhopper will be displayed at their Classic Ultralight Heritage Museum, which they plan to open in north Wales next year. More news on that in due course.

Apart from dealing in one-use flying machines, I’ve been involved with publicity events around the publication of Magic Bus in French -- cliquez ici pour les pages français -- and the republication in the UK, States and Canada of Stalin’s Nose, The Oatmeal Ark, Under the Dragon and Next Exit Magic Kingdom.  A flight of lofty adjectives took wing in France last month when Paris Match called me ‘le facétieux -- impish and mischevious — Rory’ (I can’t think why...).  It continued in Canada when the Toronto Sun ventured that I am ‘the greatest Canadian travel writer Canada has never heard of’ (my London bank manager must be Canadian too — he’s not read any of my books either).  In the UK William Dalrymple wrote a generous article in Prospect on travel writing and — err — me.

Happy hols, adventurous reading!

yours ever,

Rory

 

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