Blame Chaucer

David Hughes thinks he's found the source of the modern media. He tracks down the guilty parties in The Hack's Tale

Cross in continent

Describing place, rather than space, may be the best way to avoid the endemic bleakness that afflicts travel writing about Africa, writes Jeevan Vasagar.

So you want to be alone?

We know just the place ... a forgotten little republic, ignored even by Lonely Planet guides, where backpackers and coach parties are unknown. Welcome to Molvania. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark take a flight of fancy north of the Black Sea and south of the Baltic

French fried

Beverley Fearis and Gemma Bowes on the latest travel books.

Black in the USSR

Andrew Meier reveals the dark underbelly of a dying nation as he journeys around Russia in Black Earth

Scotch on the rocks

Raw Spirit, Iain Banks's quest for the ultimate whisky, leaves David Horspool thirsty for something more

The road to inspiration

Although he came from the 'Brideshead generation', Robert Byron's political instincts were sharp. William Dalrymple acclaims James Knox's biography of the man who wrote the greatest pre-war travel book

Book reviews

Raw Spirit | A Guidebook to the Cafés and Bars of the Eternal City | The Kindness of Strangers | A Place in the Sun - Dream Homes Within Your Reach

Family at war – with itself

Åsne Seierstad lifts the lid on Afghan family life in her fictionalised account of her time in Afghanistan, The Bookseller of Kabul