An anthology of travel writing by Virginia Woolf, who never wrote a travel book in her life, and who in her fiction treated descriptive writing with the caution it deserves, has something of the cachet of a collection of sonnets dedicated to Shakespeare's sister; but Jan Morris knows her subject, and digs deep into the writer's letters, diaries and occasional scribblings to produce a magical assortment of observations, some lyrical, some horrifically racist and insensitive, some with the caustic ring of truth which accrues to Woolf's best work. The backdrops vary - Spain, Greece, Turkey, Ireland, England - and so does the tone, for the earliest piece here was written when at the age of 18 and the latest in 1940, when she was 58. The dominant mood, however - somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, given Woolf's notorious melancholy - is upbeat and jolly.
