Just consider for a few moments. Which is the country in Europe about which you know least? Tiny San Marino perhaps? Moldova possibly? Or might it be Belarus? We hear so very little of Belarus. It is too often written off as being a post-Soviet wasteland, and too often mentioned only for its involuntary involvement in the Chernobyl catastrophe - the errant reactor, you might remember, was not in Belarus at all, but away to the south at Prypiat in Ukraine. But there is another Belarus: a country of warm and friendly people, often intensely devout; a country with great tracts of forest where bison, beaver, lynx, wolves and elk still roam; a country with magnificent baroque churches, opulent palaces and beautiful gardens.

This is the Belarus which is very competently mapped in the first ever English language guidebook to the country.