The FTWeekend paper had a review by the travel writer Sara Wheeler of A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis, which I mentioned in my roundup of books coming in 2025. It is, she concludes, a “perfect” anthology of the work of Lewis, “who is the travel writer’s travel writer, conjuring prose with more humanity than Bruce Chatwin, more insight than Jan Morris and more humour than Patrick Leigh Fermor. And as this collection brilliantly reveals, he is a better writer than all three.”

On the facing page of the same spread, there was a review of the latest book from Lewis’s biographer, Julian Evans, by the comedian and writer Viv Groskop. Groskop (author of One Ukrainian Summer) says that Evans’s Undefeatable: Odesa in Love & War is “a deeply enjoyable read… a memoir brimming with emotion and good humour” and one where “journalistic rigour is at work”.

An email from the Dorset-based independent publisher Little Toller tells me of four new titles coming early in the year: The English Path by Kim Taplin; A Venetian Bestiary by Jan Morris; Brightening from the East by Ken Worpole; and Angels in the Cellar by Peter Hahn. For details, see Little Toller’s website.