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 […]

The New York Times is time-travelling, Going Down the Road, revisiting states and landmarks covered by the American Guide Series of books, produced between 1935 and 1943 by the Federal Writers Project. Thousands of writers – including Studs Terkel, Saul Bellow and Nelson Algren – were sent out to pen what turned into a collective […]

The New York Times asked several writers this week to reflect on the consequences of “really expensive” (ie, by British standards, still cheap) fuel. Michael Paterniti waved goodbye and, in his view, good riddance to the great American road trip. Of course he’s already had his fun. He’s the author of the wonderfully titled Driving […]

My colleague Paul Mansfield, reviewing a new book about the States (Divine Magnetic Lands by Timothy O’Grady) finds evidence within it that American society is not as litigious as we think, and that Americans sue each other no more than they did 30 years ago.
Maybe, but American lawyers do put a damper on pretty well […]

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 […]

Being frightened to death is one thing. Being able to communicate that fear in prose, so that your readers are almost as frightened on your behalf, is something else. Richard Grant did just that last weekend, writing in the Telegraph Magazine of his encounter with the bandits of the Sierra Madre.

“You haven’t been to visit us for a while, sir,” the immigration officer said, flicking through my passport last week before letting me into Seattle.
I didn’t tell her that I hadn’t been made to feel overly welcome on the last few trips, even when I was simply transiting the US en route to Latin America. […]

What pictures come to mind when you hear the word Nicaragua? Not, perhaps, a scene like the one above, though this photograph, which I took from the fort of El Castillo on the Rio San Juan, is a truer representation than most people’s preconceptions.
The country is trying to rebrand itself, or rather brand itself, to […]

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.