Book of the month

This month’s bookshelf will be wearing its tux to dinner.

The Journey Matters: Twentiethcentury Travel in True Style Jonathan Glancey

Atlantic Books, £17

What is it about the golden age of travel that continues to fascinate us? The elegant glamour of a more civilised era? The romance of adventure in a world that still contained come cartographic unknowns? It certainly sounds more fun that having your knees jammed into your chest in economy class in 2020.

Jonathan Glancey certainly seems to think so. His new title is both a study and celebration of a time when travel wasn’t – as he feels – so homogenous. But what was it really like to travel during that period? To answer this, Glancey hits on a cute device, creating 15 little novellas with a fictionalised narrator as the lead character embarking on the classic experiences (as well as five real accounts of his own journeys).

As he crosses the Atlantic on the SS Normandie, flies with Imperial Airways from Southampton to Singapore and dines aboard the Graf Zeppelin, Glancey combines his passion for the era with an insight into the social and political clouds brewing over the heads of the passengers; it’s easy to forget that the renewed interest in travel was one of the few shiny aspects of the era.

Sometimes these can feel exposition-heavy – and with a whiff of wish-fulfilment – but the joy really is in the minute detail: he captures everything from the itineraries to the gearboxes to the menus. For anyone with an obsession with the Golden Age of Travel, this will be the first class ticket. Tom Hawker

All journeys should be special; all journeys should truly matter. Jonathan Glancey