The Single Travel Book That Changed My Life

When travel isn’t possible, the imagination can still wander

The coast of Corfu and the location of the shrine of Saint Arsenius, a favourite swimming spot of Lawrence Durrell. Photo by author.

When travel is not possible, we can always turn to the voyages told in books.

And that’s just what I’ve been doing recently, as a way of escaping the confines of my house. I’ve been to the Greek island of Corfu with the English writer Lawrence Durrell, who lived on the island for five years from 1935. The account of his stay is recorded in his travel book Prospero’s Cell, first published in 1945.

And I’ve remembered why this book — an old favourite of mine — has meant so much to me over the years. The reason it creates such an impression on me is really quite easy to explain: I open the book and I’m instantly transported.

The book seduces because it allows the reader to see the world as Durrell must have done: completely absorbed, with all five senses open. I find it impossible to read even a single passage and to not feel somehow ‘taught a lesson’ in how one might live life on a higher level of perception.

Here is an extract, dated 28th May 1937:

I am aware of a hundred images at once and a hundred ways of dealing with them. The bowl of wild roses. The English knives and forks. Greek cigarettes. The battered sea-stained notebook in which I…