Described as 'one of the country's finest pop culture historians', Travis Elborough is an acclaimed author and social commentator who lives in London. His work delves into the ephemera of retro culture as well as the history of London, geography, and a broad range of other subjects. His Atlas of Vanishing Places won the Illustrated Book of the Year at the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards in 2020, and he has also written The Bus We Loved, a passionate love letter to the Routemaster bus which defined London transport for more than 50 years. His other works include A Traveller’s Year, A London Year, The Long-Player Goodbye, Being A Writer and A Walk in the Park: The Life and Times of a People’s Institution. Travis is a regular contributor to Radio 4 and the Guardian, and has penned articles on all aspects of travel and culture, from pirates in the Caribbean to donkeys at the British seaside. He has written for the Times, Sunday Times, New Statesman, BBC History Magazine and Kinfolk among others, and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Westminster, where he teaches creative writing.

Introduction
Hans Christian Andersen Becomes a Novelist in Italy
Maya Angelou Loses Her Heart to Ghana
W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood Go to War
Jane Austen Gets a Whiff of Sea Air (and Seaweed) in Worthing
James Baldwin Falls for Paris in the Fall
Basho Takes the Narrow Road to the Deep North
Charles Baudelaire Fails to Make It to India
Elizabeth Bishop Is Bowled Over by Brazil
Heinrich Böll Is Enchanted by the Emerald Isle
Lewis Carroll Finds Another Wonderland in Russia
Agatha Christie Boards the Orient Express
Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens Are Far from Idle in Cumbria
Joseph Conrad Sees True Horror in the Congo
Isak Dinesen in and out of Africa
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Discovers the Perfect Place to Bury Sherlock Holmes
F. Scott Fitzgerald Bathes in the Light on the French Riviera
Gustave Flaubert Indulges Himself in the Orient
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Gets Lost in Italy
Graham Greene Learns to Love Life Again in Liberia
Hermann Hesse Goes East in Search of Enlightenment
Patricia Highsmith Spots a Likely Character in Positano
Jamaica and Haiti Cast a Spell on Zora Neale Hurston
Jack Kerouac Goes on the Road for the First Time
Jack London Pans for Gold in the Klondike
Federico García Lorca Takes a Bite of the Big Apple
Katherine Mansfield Mines Her Time at a German Spa for Stories
Herman Melville Sees the Watery Parts of the World
Alexandr Pushkin Convalesces in the Caucasus and the Crimea
J.K. Rowling Gets a Train of Thought on the Line from Manchester to London
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Crashes into the Headlines
Sam Selvon Sails to England
Bram Stoker Stakes Out Dracula in Whitby
Sylvia Townsend Warner Finds Poetry in the Essex Marshes
Mary Wollstonecraft Soothes a Broken Heart in Scandinavia
It’s All Greek to Virginia Woolf
Selected Bibliography
Index
Picture Credits
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