Inside the Travel Lab

From the moment I opened the parcel, I could tell it was going to be special. I’d expected a standard “how to cook book” but instead I discovered a dreamy journey to India, bound between hardback pages adorned with purple and gold. Tasting India by Christine Manfield is clearly a labour of love. With India, [...]

I’m going to tell you a secret. I’ve longed to visit Ljubljana. I’ve longed to let my tongue run over the improbable syllables of its name before I even knew how to say them…

Every now and then I have trouble writing a review. Getting Out of Auto by Bethany Salvon has been giving me trouble for a couple of days now.

It’s not because I don’t like it. It’s because I’ve fallen in love with it.

The Seville Communion takes readers into two different worlds. It starts with the priests who guard the Pope’s personal computer in the Vatican. Then we meet Quart, a priest with more than a hint of James Bond and Luca Brazi, who works for the Pope and, well, Christianity at large. He…

When the blurb said “No religious or political standpoint,” my curiosity was nudged. When it went on to say “Essays from Nobel Prizewinners, Bush and Blair,” I was hooked. What would they have to say?

Guest author Robin Locker explains why she recommends The Reluctant Tuscan.

Set in the streets of Barcelona around the time of the Civil War, The Shadow of the Wind delivers poetic melancholy, gothic..

As a thriller, I enjoyed this book almost until its conclusion, however as a travelogue I loved it all the way through.

Without a doubt, Wild Swans influenced my travels more than any other book. Detailed, intense and unflinching, it tells the story of girls with bound feet, Mao’s revolution and the famines and doctrines…

Montmartre is a village, my mother used to say; an island rising out of the Paris fog.
Vianne Rocher, The Lollipop Shoes by Joanne Harris
The Lollipop Shoes delivers a thriller, wrapped in the shiny foil and sugar-dusted facade of a tale about a chocolate shop.