Ancient and modern

The photographer Joe Cornish and the writer Roly Smith have been time-travelling. In This Land, they present the results: a selection of their 50 favourite landscapes in Britain, ranging from the ancient rocks of the Scottish Highlands, where man’s presence is all but invisible, to the shingle spit of Dungeness, where, in Cold War bunkers and nuclear power stations, it’s inescapable. In between, they explore mountains, coasts and islands, reflecting on their own experiences in each place and suggesting what to look out for. This land, they say, with a nod to the American songwriter Woody Guthrie, is also “your land”.

This Land is available from Telegraph Books (0844 871 1514; books.telegraph. co.uk) at £25 plus p&p.

her account of the river’s story told in the poetry, prose and illustration it has inspired; Helena Attlee, whose The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit was shortlisted for the 2015 Stanford Dolman Travel Book award; Iain Finlayson, author of Tangier: City of the Dream; Jenny Balfour Paul, author of Deeper Than Indigo, about her travels on the trail of the Victorian adventurer Thomas Machell; and John Julius Norwich, author of Sicily: A Short History from the Ancient Greeks to CosaNostra.

Speakers at the Cambridge Literary Festival (April 5-14;

Exotic England; Anna Pavord, author of Landskipping, a celebration of the British landscape; Simon Bradley, author of The Railways: Nation, Network and People; and Peter Frankopan, author of The Silk Roads.

Three writers will discuss their travels in Pakistan during an evening at the Pakistan High Commission in London on April 28, organised by Wild Frontiers. They are Mick Conefrey, author of The Ghosts of K2; Matthew Green, South Asia security correspondent for the Financial Times; and Jonny Bealby, founder of Wild Frontiers and author of For a Pagan Song. Tickets £10. To register, email events@ wildfrontiers.co.uk

In an exchange of emails with the chef Anthony Bourdain that forms a foreword, Matt Goulding wonders which potential readers he should be addressing: armchair travellers, or people about to fly to Japan? He does an excellent job of catering for both.

His book, the first print publication from the team behind the acclaimed website Roads & Kingdoms, is beautifully designed and a rare hybrid. It’s partly an education, with primers on everything from the etiquette of Japanese pubs to the offerings of convenience stores; but it’s mainly an entertainment, an example of the longform narrative-with-pictures at which Roads & Kingdoms excels.

Goulding, editor and co-founder of the site, arrived in Japan as “the most outside of outsiders”, but he clearly developed a facility for getting chefs

Rice, Noodle, Fish is available from Telegraph Books (0844 871 1514; books. telegraph.co.uk) at £14.99 plus p&p.

The eye-catching geology of Arran in Scotland, left