On the British and American fascination with rocking chairs and upholstery springs in the 19th century.

The author, on book tour when the pandemic set in, reflects on what could have been worse—and what could be better.

One cyclist rides west, another rides east. They meet on an empty stretch of road in a Kazakh desert.

A series of one-sided international love letters.

"I want to frame those first three months I was in Paris with you, and that month last year in Morocco. I want to hang it next to the wooden clock on the wall above my bed. Those hot nights of waiting, talking, making love with our words on Rue D’Aboukir. Waiting for you to return to my fourth-floor apartment with ice cubes for the Martini Rossato and the loud love making that would follow next to paper thin walls where I could hear the neighbours cough. Paper-thin walls never mattered in that hotel room in Morocco. Calling out 'Oui', bent over the bed and the knock of the chamber maid on the door."

A cultural history of the travel-writing.