A “vivid account of life in modern Afghanistan” is promised in a book to be published later this year by Lyse Doucet, chief international correspondent for the BBC. The Finest Hotel in Kabul was one of the titles highlighted in an event last night in London by the publisher Cornerstone, according to The Bookseller. Doucet explores the history of the city through the hotel she has stayed at during her reporting since 1988. The book is due to appear under Cornerstone’s Hutchinson Heinemann imprint in October.

The guidebook publisher Bradt is marking its half-century this year. In Taking the Risk: My adventures in travel and publishing (Bradt, £20, May 1), Hilary Bradt, co-founder of the company, looks back on her life on the road and in the books trade.

In The Beacon Bike (Icon Books, £20, April 25), Ed Peppitt tells of his 3,500-mile cycle ride — following a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis — to explore the on-shore and off-shore lighthouses around the coastline of England and Wales. The book, his publisher says, is a “love letter to… lighthouse-keeping, the beauty of the British coastline and the communities that nurture it”.

Speakers at the Daunt Books Festival in London next month (March 14-15) will include Tom Parfitt, author of High Caucasus, Gareth E Rees, author of Sunken Lands, and Sathnam Sanghera, whose latest book is Empireworld. Sanghera and Andrea Wulf, whose books include the international bestseller The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, will be among speakers in an event on February 26 at Kew Gardens in London organised by the spoken-word forum 5×15.