Views from Abroad: The Spectator Book of Travel Writing

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!