Undaunted by travel
Daunt Books! One of my favourite places in London. The 19th century shop has been in business since Edwardian times, and its shelves are less like a bookshop, more like the personal library of someone who clocked up one helluva lot of Air Miles. Sniff around as much as you like; you won't smell a CRM system or data mining software here. Like an Oddbins wine shop, it sells things its owner wants to sell, and it's all the better for it.
Daunt's retail space is stupidly wonderful: a perfectly-proportioned oblong room with shelves on three communicating floors, including an internal walkway and a big hole leading down to the basement. Daunt is famous for travel books. I'm in an expansive mood - it's the one weekend of the year I buy clothes, and £400 has been added to Ralph Lauren's topline so far today - so blowing £62 on travel guides and a Penguin of Bocacchio's Decameron doesn't seem such a big deal.
There's a conundrum here, I know. I can't stand that self-aggrandising grab-bag of cliches known as 'travel writing', and Daunt is big with the Brysons. But while I hate travel writing, I love guidebooks. In my teens I wandered cloudlike through Lonely Planets before hitting the Rough when I railed across Europe and America for real, returning to the Yellow Bible when I lived and worked in Asia. But today I think I found a new love: the DK guides, packed with photos and maps instead of opinionated text.
They're less about this year's restaurant or the cheapest hotel; the DK guides focus on the big stuff, Taj Mahals and Alhambras and Louvres, and let you work out where to eat and sleep. (Which is the right way to do it. Next time someone tells you about a wonderful little noodle shop they found in Thailand, check Lonely Planet. That's where they found it.) And because the maps are hand-illustrated and the photos in colour, the DK books bring places to life before you get there. I walk away with India, France, and Italy in a little cloth bag. And my fondness for this little shop undaunted.
Daunt's retail space is stupidly wonderful: a perfectly-proportioned oblong room with shelves on three communicating floors, including an internal walkway and a big hole leading down to the basement. Daunt is famous for travel books. I'm in an expansive mood - it's the one weekend of the year I buy clothes, and £400 has been added to Ralph Lauren's topline so far today - so blowing £62 on travel guides and a Penguin of Bocacchio's Decameron doesn't seem such a big deal.
There's a conundrum here, I know. I can't stand that self-aggrandising grab-bag of cliches known as 'travel writing', and Daunt is big with the Brysons. But while I hate travel writing, I love guidebooks. In my teens I wandered cloudlike through Lonely Planets before hitting the Rough when I railed across Europe and America for real, returning to the Yellow Bible when I lived and worked in Asia. But today I think I found a new love: the DK guides, packed with photos and maps instead of opinionated text.
They're less about this year's restaurant or the cheapest hotel; the DK guides focus on the big stuff, Taj Mahals and Alhambras and Louvres, and let you work out where to eat and sleep. (Which is the right way to do it. Next time someone tells you about a wonderful little noodle shop they found in Thailand, check Lonely Planet. That's where they found it.) And because the maps are hand-illustrated and the photos in colour, the DK books bring places to life before you get there. I walk away with India, France, and Italy in a little cloth bag. And my fondness for this little shop undaunted.
posted by chrisworth at 7:01 PM
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