In this collection of essays, British journalist, poet and inveterate wanderer, Laurie Lee, weaves through a lifetime of travel via whimsical prose and a sharp eye for detail. The piece entitled, Ibiza High Fifties, depicts the island, its inhabitants and a gaggle of wayward adventurers as it was well before the advent of mass tourism.

Arriving after a six-hour ferry ride from Mallorca, Lee describes Ibiza town as having a ‘commanding but scratch-me-down look – a broody old citadel squatting plumply on a rock and trailing feather-white slums into the water. Save for the occasional sea-mists it has extraordinary clarity and if Greek would be hymned for its light. Politically Spanish, emotionally Catalan, and pagan-Catholic by nature, it is otherwise nothing but itself – which is something history has never defined.’ By this stage, Lee has become a die-hard cynic but at least one with a great turn of phrase.