Colin Thubron

In 1981, during the Brezhnev era, Thubron broke with his earlier work (on cities and small countries) and travelled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey recorded in Among the Russians.

In an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Bookclub in 2018, Thubron discussed the book with the presenter James Naughtie and answered questions from the audience.

Others, however, use travel or a fictional abroad: Turning Back the Sun (1991) and an imaginary journey to Vilcabamba, Peru in To the Last City (2002), long-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

[14] Thubron says that he was influenced by Palgrave's Golden Treasury as a schoolboy, and was initially inspired by the travel writing of Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris and Freya Stark.

He admires the English novelist William Golding[15] and chose Victor Gollancz's anthology A Year of Grace as his book for Desert Island Discs.