When I was working as a travel editor for a national newspaper and a writer approached me with an idea for a piece, I would expect him or her to have a peg on which to hang it. On Deskbound Traveller, I can admit the timeless as well as the topical. The latter approach has long been one of the guiding principles of Slightly Foxed, the London-based literary magazine “for people who don’t want to read only what the big publishers are hyping and the newspapers are reviewing”. On its latest podcast, dedicated to travel writing, the guests are the writer Sara Wheeler and the publisher (and writer) Barnaby Rogerson, of Eland Books, who have plenty of recommendations drawn from travel’s back catalogue.

  There’s brief mention, too, of Wheeler’s latest book, due out next month. For Mud and Stars (Jonathan Cape), she travels through Russia with the writers of the Golden Age — from Pushkin to Tolstoy — as her guides.