By the end of every guidebook I write I swear it will be my last. But then you get an advance and spend it, and the cycle continues. Typing in telephone numbers, opening hours and prices isn’t much fun, but inbetween you do pick up some good newspaper features and it does keep you on the road. My first guidebook was an update to a Kenya book written by Michael Bond – and it took me years to work out that was the Paddington guy. He wrote it as if any visitor to Kenya rents a Land Rover, as he did, and then spends eight weeks visiting friends. I couldn’t see that working in the age of three-night matatu safaris and had to give it a complete restructure. I went on to write a second edition to Kenya, Turkey and South Africa for Kummerley and Frey, and updated their titles to Spain (one star on Amazon but currently selling for £42 used) and Bali. I have contributed to titles for the Rough Guides and written sections for Insight Guides. I researched and wrote a guidebook for family travel to Thailand for Frommers but rates were steadily going down and expectations up. The most depressing, perhaps, was the guide book to South Africa that went to press half way through a nation-wide update to telephone numbers: half the phone numbers I typed in I knew would be wrong when the book was printed.
Every guidebook I finish I swear it will be my last. But then in 2020 I was asked to update the UK’s Good Pub Guide. When the industry was in lockdown and when pubs were flickering out of business as if a cloud was blotting out stars. And of course, in spite of everything, I said yes..
