Eland, which last week celebrated its 40th anniversary as a travel publisher, has two new books coming later this month. One is Smelling the Breezes (October 20, £14.99, paperback), first published in 1959, in which Ralph and Molly Izzard recount a 300-mile walk down the spine of the Lebanon “with four children, two donkeys and Elias, the family’s gardener, nursemaid and friend”. Ralph Izzard, a note from the publisher points out, was a “heroic” intelligence officer in the Royal Navy during the Second World War and one of Ian Fleming’s role models for James Bond.

The other Eland title is On Travel and the Journey Through Life (October 27, £9.99, hardback): “a pyrotechnic display of cracking one-liners, cynical wordplay and comic observation, mining 3,000 years of global wit and wisdom: from Pliny to Spinoza and from Albert Einstein to Aunt Augusta… it proves that travel — far from being an indulgent escape — is real preparation for the journey through life.” The collection is edited by Eland’s Barnaby Rogerson, with portraits of writers by Kate Boxer.

The same theme, coincidentally, is explored in a new book out today from Rolf Potts, that tireless advocate of independent travel. On Twitter he says that The Vagabond’s Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel (Ballantine Books, $28.99) “draws on 3,000 years of global travel wisdom to explore how journeys can deepen your life (and how life itself is a journey)”.