The Prince of Wales’s recent comments on GM food reopened the debate over whether he is fit to be king. But what else is he fit for? Paul Theroux has a suggestion. In his new book, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, he reports an encounter he had in India with the Prince, parts of […]

Looking for an authoritative and frank guide to Barcelona? I’d recommend Pepe Carvalho, a former cop, former Marxist and constant gourmet. You can find him in the crime fiction of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the Catalan journalist and novelist. That enterprising publisher Serpent’s Tail is issuing this month, for the first time in English, Montalbán’s Tattoo. […]

What’s the longest you’ve been delayed at an airport? Long enough to write a book? That’s the premise of Dear American Airlines, the debut novel of Jonathan Miles, reviewed in The New York Times by Richard Russo – though I’ve just realised you can only read that if you’re a registered user of the NY […]

Leo Hickman’s The Final Call, which I have mentioned before, is now out in a new paperback edition. Well worth a look if you have any interest at all in what can be done to make tourism a positive force rather than the “pernicious disease” Hickman finds it to be in so many places. Have […]

What was that I was saying about publishers wasting paper? We’ve now received six review copies on this desk of the same book, published by Eden Project Books. Its title: Confessions of An Eco-Sinner.

Maybe Marks and Spencer, which is going to start charging customers for plastic bags, could teach publishers a thing or two about avoiding waste.
  I’ve already remarked on how I received four copies (now five) of one particular book. This morning the travel desk received three copies of China: A portrait of the people, place […]

Many book publishers, in an effort to save the planet (or at least themselves), have taken to sending me, instead of a review copy, an email asking me if I really want a review copy. Until today, that seemed to me evidence of a lack of faith in their authors. Surely if they thought the […]

Don’t judge a book by the cover of the DVD of the film made of one of the author’s earlier efforts. I nearly made that mistake when Weidenfeld and Nicolson sent me a copy of The Wind from the East by Almudena Grandes (originally published as Los aires difíciles). All I knew of Grandes, I’m […]

As Edinburgh is to Rebus and Oxford to Morse, so New Orleans and its surroundings are to Robicheaux. The streets of the city and the bayous of the surrounding countryside are the place where James Lee Burke’s hero, a recovering drunk and a Vietnam vet, does his policing. Though I’ve never been there, Burke has […]

I’m not the only one who can’t see the point of all these 1,000 Places to See Before You Die books. There’s a good piece on the subject from Frank Bures on the excellent World Hum site.