Tim Moore is one of those writers whose travels I enjoy without being at all tempted to follow in his tyre tracks. For his last book, he retraced the 1914 Giro d’Italia on a 99-year-old bike with wooden wheels. For his latest, The Cyclist Who Went Out in the Cold (Vintage), he’s followed the line that was the Iron Curtain, 10,000 kilometres (6,250 miles) from the Arctic Circle to Bulgaria, on a vintage East German shopping bike. He set off when Finland was still wearing its winter coat — a mad idea, but it makes for hilarious reading. There was an extract at the weekend in the Telegraph Magazine.