Broadening the mind without moving

The phrase ‘armchair travel’ sounds quaint; suggestive of austerity at home and anarchy abroad; an era of currency restrictions and mustachioed bandits, when it was altogether more advisable to stay at home and read some daredevil’s account of the Damascene soukhs or the Grand Canal than risk venturing into such places yourself. But travel is now so easy that settling for its sedentary reflection looks like admitting to rather withered aspirations: so it is a surprise to see four attractively packaged books from Haus in a new series cheerfully called ‘Armchair Travellers’.

Among them is one for which I can think of no precedent, a travel book written by someone who stayed at home. The only other claimant that comes to mind is Frederic Prokosch’s The Asiatics, but that was a novel. Although the arrangement in Damascus: Taste of a City is bizarre, it is done with aplomb and it has both logic and charm.