“I was to look around me as though I had never been in this place before. And slowly, my travels began to bear fruit…”

SWIMMING POOL presents: The Art of Travel (2004) by Alain de Botton

This book is an eclectic collection of essays that mixes personal thought with insights drawn from some of the great figures of the past - all distinguished fellow travellers including Baudelaire, Alexander von Humboldt and Xavier de Maistre.

A love letter to liminal spaces with thoughts on airports, landscapes, museums, holiday romances, photographs, exotic carpets and the contents of hotel mini-bars.

Listen, we want you to buy it! And read it! Preferably on buses, planes, trains and maybe try to finish it in a hotel lobby. And then we want you to pass it on to a friend because few things are as exciting as the idea of travelling somewhere else.