Forster is always undoing, and no less so in this account of the remote princely court of Dewas in Madhya Pradesh, where he visited and worked as private secretary to the Maharajah in the ea... read more
Marzahn is a suburb of prefab GDR housing on the outskirts of Berlin. This odd but brilliant book, about a chiropodist who talks to her clients, is both memoir and portrait of modern Germany... read more
Rejmer has collected personal accounts of survival in one of the most isolated countries on earth, under the brutally oppressive regime of Enver Hoxha. Touching, engrossing, harrowing...
Begins with a Perec epigraph: "De l'autobus, je regarde Paris" - and Elkin does, in a diary of vignettes about the 'infra-ordinary' (Perec again): fellow commuters, a diversion, a girl with ... read more
Despite often possessing cameras, grand tourists persisted in using watercolours. This fascinating, wide-ranging illustrated book explores attitudes towards the picturesque, Empire, the Orie... read more
From the collection of an Italian banker whose work financed infrastructure such as railways, mines, electric power stations and shipping companies in the Near East.
Breathtaking shots from the Himalayas to the Dolomites, via Africa, Patagonia, Alaska... with suitably lofty quotations (Dante, Byron, Austen, Nietzsche et al) alongside them.
Davdison's feel for dusk first came our way with his wonderfully evocative book The Last of the Light: About Twilight. Here he produces a series of nocturnes about cities at night-fall, wint... read more
A journey to find hope - or rather Hope: Fiennes's map for his wanderings are the myths, and then the myths come to infuse what he finds in Arcadia, the Peloponnese and beyond. The river Lou... read more
There was a bit of a gap between Anthony and Cleopatra's Nile cruises and the C19th heyday of purpose-built, shallow-bottomed paddle-wheelers. This book is about the latter - delicious trave... read more
The Dutch historian and journalist on the first two decades of the C21st and the forces that have rocked the European project. How could the dream of unity, peace, prosperity and co-operatio... read more
That venerable and dedicated historian of ancient India travelled half a century ago to northern and north-western China to work at the cave sites of Maijishan and Dunhuang; based on her dia... read more