Eothen

One of the most witty and idiosyncratic travel books, Eothen started out as a few notes scribbled on the back of a map for a friend, but took Kinglake seven years of painstaking work to finesse. The physical details of the journey, undertaken in 1834 through Turkey, Cyprus, the Holy Land, Cairo and Damascus, are barely mentioned. The infectious charm lies in the conversations, the whimsical chance encounters and the attitudes of the author. Over the years, Kinglake has been recognised as a stylist without equal.

Alexander William Kinglake was an English travel writer and historian. He was born near Taunton, Somerset, and educated at Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was called to the Bar in 1837, and built up a thriving legal practice, which, in 1856, he abandoned to devote himself to literature and public life. His magnum opus was an eight-volume history of the Crimean War, The Invasion of the Crimea, though he is better known as the author of Eothen.