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Views from Abroad: The Spectator Book of Travel Writing
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- GenresNonfictionTravel
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
About the author
Philip Marsden
48 books51 followersPhilip Marsden is the author of a number of works of travel writing, fiction and non-fiction, including The Bronski House, The Spirit Wrestlers and The Levelling Sea. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and his work has been translated into fifteen languages. He lives in Cornwall.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 19, 2024
I picked up a tattered copy of this at a books sale - these multi author anthologies work quite well for me when I leave them in the car and read 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there.
This is a collection of articles published previously in British weekly magazine The Spectator between 1950 and 1988 (it was published in 1999). I am not familiar with The Spectator, but if these articles are reflective it seems fairly high-brow, and this was not as enjoyable as I had hoped.
The book is formatted into eight sections, and these appealed in different amounts, and as such I enjoyed them in different amounts. There were some very well respected authors featured throughout, most with multiple articles in multiple sections of the book. To mention a few of the good ones - Freya Stark, Peter Fleming, Shiva Naipaul, Evelyn Waugh, Patrick Marnham, Patrick Leigh Fermor and one each from VS Naipaul, Graham Greene and Colin Thubron (as well as the introduction). There was the odd good story by authors unknown to me, but a lot of stories from several authors who I didn't enjoy at all.
Travel and Travellers was a poor start - it was largely writing about people writing about travelling. Many of the articles came across as snobbish and patronising, and I almost packed this book in based on these. To be fair there were some good parts, but they were vastly outnumbered by awful articles. Included here were some profiles of travel authors (Freya Stark, Patrick Leigh Fermor & Eric Newby) that were good but unattributed to an author. This section I would rate 2/5.
Western Europe came next. This is not really the centre of my geographical interest, and it is a shame that it came hard on the heels of the poor introductory section. While the articles were more focussed on travel itself, for me it was pretty dry, with only a few articles standing out as excellent. 2/5.
Eastern Europe was a step up, mostly in my interest and perhaps because it was a shorted section and more punchy. Some interesting articles on Russia here. This section I rated 3/5.
Africa was the first section which really went well. Evelyn Waugh writes well in this section, and Shiva Naipaul features heavily. 4/5
The Middle East this too was an interesting section at 4/5
The Far East and Australia OK at 3/5, but Australia didn't get much press - interesting around Indonesia and South East Asia.
North America I found this section dull, but again, this is not the centre of my geographical interest. Many of the articles were city focussed and seemed to be built around people and not places. 2/5
Central and South America wraps up the final section, and was spent mostly in the Caribbean and Central America, with only a few stories from South American countries. This didn't finish the book off with any gusto. 3/5
There are notes on contributors and an index.
Overall, I found this book underwhelming and it was only because I was reading a story or two at a time that I finished it. It was very dated around the writing style, and I suspect The Spectator wouldn't be something I would read back in the day.
Later this week I will add the destination shelves to this review, but that is a lot of admin I can't dedicate right now!
Adding up those scores comes to 2.8 stars out of five. Three seems over generous, but it is what it is!
This is a collection of articles published previously in British weekly magazine The Spectator between 1950 and 1988 (it was published in 1999). I am not familiar with The Spectator, but if these articles are reflective it seems fairly high-brow, and this was not as enjoyable as I had hoped.
The book is formatted into eight sections, and these appealed in different amounts, and as such I enjoyed them in different amounts. There were some very well respected authors featured throughout, most with multiple articles in multiple sections of the book. To mention a few of the good ones - Freya Stark, Peter Fleming, Shiva Naipaul, Evelyn Waugh, Patrick Marnham, Patrick Leigh Fermor and one each from VS Naipaul, Graham Greene and Colin Thubron (as well as the introduction). There was the odd good story by authors unknown to me, but a lot of stories from several authors who I didn't enjoy at all.
Travel and Travellers was a poor start - it was largely writing about people writing about travelling. Many of the articles came across as snobbish and patronising, and I almost packed this book in based on these. To be fair there were some good parts, but they were vastly outnumbered by awful articles. Included here were some profiles of travel authors (Freya Stark, Patrick Leigh Fermor & Eric Newby) that were good but unattributed to an author. This section I would rate 2/5.
Western Europe came next. This is not really the centre of my geographical interest, and it is a shame that it came hard on the heels of the poor introductory section. While the articles were more focussed on travel itself, for me it was pretty dry, with only a few articles standing out as excellent. 2/5.
Eastern Europe was a step up, mostly in my interest and perhaps because it was a shorted section and more punchy. Some interesting articles on Russia here. This section I rated 3/5.
Africa was the first section which really went well. Evelyn Waugh writes well in this section, and Shiva Naipaul features heavily. 4/5
The Middle East this too was an interesting section at 4/5
The Far East and Australia OK at 3/5, but Australia didn't get much press - interesting around Indonesia and South East Asia.
North America I found this section dull, but again, this is not the centre of my geographical interest. Many of the articles were city focussed and seemed to be built around people and not places. 2/5
Central and South America wraps up the final section, and was spent mostly in the Caribbean and Central America, with only a few stories from South American countries. This didn't finish the book off with any gusto. 3/5
There are notes on contributors and an index.
Overall, I found this book underwhelming and it was only because I was reading a story or two at a time that I finished it. It was very dated around the writing style, and I suspect The Spectator wouldn't be something I would read back in the day.
Later this week I will add the destination shelves to this review, but that is a lot of admin I can't dedicate right now!
Adding up those scores comes to 2.8 stars out of five. Three seems over generous, but it is what it is!
May 5, 2026
Possibly the most disgusting and infuriating book I've ever encountered. There are some quite worthy pieces among the selections (listed below), but they are overwhelmed by the many instances of ignorance and malice.
Yes, the book was assembled 37 years ago, and yes its contents were drawn from a publication known for certain points of view. However, I thought, 37 years is not so long ago; the subject matter ("travel") is benign and universal; the Spectator presents itself as a highbrow cultural endeavour; and there are some quite well-known writers included here, so this surely will be a worthwhile read. How wrong I was.
The typical selection is based on insulting, mischaracterising, and misunderstanding (whether carelessly or wilfully) the destination and its inhabitants, often in the most retrograde terms. Patrick Marnham goes to Mexico and immediately describes someone as having a face like a monkey. Rose Macaulay goes to Spain and complains that the "décor of the churches" reflects "Latin bad taste," and advises the reader to "avoid Gypsies." Jeffrey Bernard goes on a press trip to Norway, declares "I'd like to f--k" an actress he is interviewing, and dismisses a female journalist as a "girl" whom he wishes would commit suicide. Richard Bassett opines that Romanian women are "easy on the eye," but laments that their country is "an essentially Oriental environment." Other writers complain that their trip was ruined by "the presence of lesbians," that Africans are incapable of producing something as simple as a bicycle pump, that the food or weather or landscape of their destination is terrible, and on and on in this vein for hundreds of pages.
And then there is the pervading air of British solipsism, that misplaced superiority complex which holds that nobody and nothing on earth can be as interesting or worth learning about as Britain and the British. PJ Kavanagh, for example, says that the European countries are all alike, and the best thing to visit in Florence is the British Institute. Americans are singled out for special abuse, surely because they arouse the greatest feelings of failure in this type of maliciously insecure Brit. Not only the selections in the North American chapter, but also pieces set in Norway and Thailand and elsewhere, manage to cram in references to Americans being loud, fat, oblivious, rude, or obsessed with money (rather than being obsessed with "class" like a proper person.)
Even Jan Morris - who wrote so many spectacular, inquisitive, sensitive books about so many places - here dismisses Istanbul as a hellish city where everyday life is "awful," where "beady eyed" men and "shrieking" women are "exuding a savage fury." This is so far from both a typical Jan Morris essay and the reality of Istanbul, that I can only assume she stooped to affect this tone in order to indulge the expectations of the Spectator and its readers.
These are essays for angry, prejudiced people who want their "travel writing" to validate their resentments and insecurities, not to illuminate anything about what a place is actually like. However, a few good pieces did somehow make it through the editorial process. If you happen to pick up this book, zero in on the following selections:
- the introductory profile of Freya Stark
- Patrick Leigh Fermor on the serpent festival of Cucullo
- Cyril Ray in Moscow
- Hilary Mantel on expat life in Saudi Arabia
- Colin Thubron in China (he also wrote the foreword to this collection, which I hope he now regrets)
One star, and a borderline DNF, since I abandoned a lot of the selections after they enraged me within the first few paragraphs.
Yes, the book was assembled 37 years ago, and yes its contents were drawn from a publication known for certain points of view. However, I thought, 37 years is not so long ago; the subject matter ("travel") is benign and universal; the Spectator presents itself as a highbrow cultural endeavour; and there are some quite well-known writers included here, so this surely will be a worthwhile read. How wrong I was.
The typical selection is based on insulting, mischaracterising, and misunderstanding (whether carelessly or wilfully) the destination and its inhabitants, often in the most retrograde terms. Patrick Marnham goes to Mexico and immediately describes someone as having a face like a monkey. Rose Macaulay goes to Spain and complains that the "décor of the churches" reflects "Latin bad taste," and advises the reader to "avoid Gypsies." Jeffrey Bernard goes on a press trip to Norway, declares "I'd like to f--k" an actress he is interviewing, and dismisses a female journalist as a "girl" whom he wishes would commit suicide. Richard Bassett opines that Romanian women are "easy on the eye," but laments that their country is "an essentially Oriental environment." Other writers complain that their trip was ruined by "the presence of lesbians," that Africans are incapable of producing something as simple as a bicycle pump, that the food or weather or landscape of their destination is terrible, and on and on in this vein for hundreds of pages.
And then there is the pervading air of British solipsism, that misplaced superiority complex which holds that nobody and nothing on earth can be as interesting or worth learning about as Britain and the British. PJ Kavanagh, for example, says that the European countries are all alike, and the best thing to visit in Florence is the British Institute. Americans are singled out for special abuse, surely because they arouse the greatest feelings of failure in this type of maliciously insecure Brit. Not only the selections in the North American chapter, but also pieces set in Norway and Thailand and elsewhere, manage to cram in references to Americans being loud, fat, oblivious, rude, or obsessed with money (rather than being obsessed with "class" like a proper person.)
Even Jan Morris - who wrote so many spectacular, inquisitive, sensitive books about so many places - here dismisses Istanbul as a hellish city where everyday life is "awful," where "beady eyed" men and "shrieking" women are "exuding a savage fury." This is so far from both a typical Jan Morris essay and the reality of Istanbul, that I can only assume she stooped to affect this tone in order to indulge the expectations of the Spectator and its readers.
These are essays for angry, prejudiced people who want their "travel writing" to validate their resentments and insecurities, not to illuminate anything about what a place is actually like. However, a few good pieces did somehow make it through the editorial process. If you happen to pick up this book, zero in on the following selections:
- the introductory profile of Freya Stark
- Patrick Leigh Fermor on the serpent festival of Cucullo
- Cyril Ray in Moscow
- Hilary Mantel on expat life in Saudi Arabia
- Colin Thubron in China (he also wrote the foreword to this collection, which I hope he now regrets)
One star, and a borderline DNF, since I abandoned a lot of the selections after they enraged me within the first few paragraphs.
July 23, 2024
This travel book, while not as exciting as one where the writer undertakes a great trek across a continent, has a place with its short, pithy and humorous essays about foreign lands. It is the kind of book you need when you want a quick diversion, while traveling, lying on a beach, or waiting for something to happen. It includes several hundred articles, mostly only one or two pages long, published in the Spectator magazine from the 1950s to 1980s, written by renowned writers such as Kingsley Amis, Evelyn Waugh, Jan Morris and Graham Greene. Excellent writing style and plenty of satirical British humour make easy reading.
Read
March 9, 2018in lieu of a reread of 'shadows of silk road'
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews