Discover three fine books for winter reading. We delve into the first English-language biography of Joseph Roth, find Iain’s Bamforth new collection of essays is full of zest and follow Vitali Vitaliev on a romp across and along some of the world’s ...

It's surely not a great challenge to write a new guidebook on well trodden territory. But imagine you were asked to write a guidebook to North Korea, Turkmenistan or Belarus. Quite a challenge! But it is just the kind of challenge relished by the ...

The first product from the new Swiss publisher Imaginary Wanderings sets a dauntingly high standard in terms of its look, feel and production values. And the content is equally fine. We explore the Lake Lucerne and Gotthard region in the company of ...

The reprinting of old, out-of copyright train timetables has become quite a craze - and a money-spinner for publishers keen to exploit the nostalgia market. We look at a reprinted 1873 timetable and find that the advertisements are a good deal more ...

The last year or two have seen a flood of new books which invite readers to engage on a virtual journey exploring our planet. We take a look at a new volume called 'Atlas of Improbable Places', just published by Aurum ...

Two new books arising from the Spine of Russia project afford a look at everyday life in the Russian Federation. In this preview of one of the books, Paul Richardson swaps notes with Igor, who is selling berries on a roadside in ...

In 1863, Jemima Morrell participated in the first ever escorted tour of the Alps organised by Cook. Her diary of that journey is a remarkable piece of writing - one that slices through Victorian formality. The story of what happened to that diary ...

Many books cross our desks. This year, one particular volume has struck us more than any other. Wooden Churches: Travelling in the Russian North is a remarkable volume. Superb photography by Richard Davies complemented by evocative prose by Matilda ...

An innovative series of guidebooks to European cities and regions, produced by the Versailles-based publishing house Jonglez, prompts us to reflect on the quest for authenticity in ...

Two new series of books, one from Oxygen Books in the UK and the other from Duke University Press in the USA impel us to reflect on a growing public appetite for anthologies of good literature about places in ...

It takes a lot of courage to re-engineer our relationship with time, to realise that we have been seduced by speed. But a new series of books from Bradt Travel Guides encourage us to do just that by focusing in on the local. Slow travel comes of ...

Before being quietly consigned to literary history in 1959, the Penguin Cerise series brought some of the very best of the world's English language travel writing to a huge readership at affordable paperback prices. We remember an icon of ...

Jewish passengers travelled hard class on the railways of eastern Europe one hundred years ago, enjoying none of the comforts of soft sleeping cars, but creating in the Russian train a very Jewish space - a perfect setting for Yiddish story ...

on the trail of Henning Mankell's fictional character in the southern Swedish town of ...

hidden europe reviews some of the finest travel writing of the last hundred years and ...

Nigel Roberts' new guidebook to Belarus, just published by Bradt Travel Guides, is authoritative and insightful. We review the first ever English language guide for travellers visiting Europe's least known ...

There has been a paucity of women writers celebrating the Welsh landscape. For too long the narrative has been dominated by English writers - mainly men! A new book restores the ...

We learnt from 'The Europe Book' that Frenchmen no longer were berets, that Liechtenstein is Europe's largest exporter of dentures and that the sugar cube was invented in the former Czechoslovakia. We review Lonely Planet's latest coffee table ...

Skip the club sandwich and the frozen margaritas. Remember that the central rite of passage for successful travellers is to escape the prevailing tide of uniformity that engulfs Europe's prime tourist centres. We review a series of guidebooks, all ...