One of the funniest pieces in Geoff Dyer’s new collection of essays, White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World, is about not seeing the Northern Lights. I’ve mentioned the book in my monthly spread for Telegraph Travel, due to appear in the print section this weekend, but didn’t discover until today that White Sands is Radio 4’s Book of the Week. And that essay on the Northern Lights, “Northern Dark”, is one of the pieces the BBC team has chosen.