The Battle for Room Service

Beginning in Timaru, reputedly the most activity-challenged place in New Zealand, Lawson travels through Australia and Canada, where he learns to be especially wary of any place named after Queen Victoria or her close relatives. After dropping in on Normal, Illinois and Dead Horse, Alaska – place names in the quiet world are sometimes disarmingly honest – he travels through soothing Switzerland, Milton Keynes, and Belgium, before his journey's end in EuroDisney, Expo '92, and Center Parcs: territories of Somewhere, the new tourist continent where, in a reversal of the usual rules of travel, countries come to you. Mark Lawson is a novelist and cultural critic. He has published four novels including Idlewild, Going Out Live and Enough Is Enough. His work as a broadcaster includes presenting Radio 4's Front Row and Foreign Bodies - A History of Crime Fiction and BBC4's Mark Lawson Talks to . . . . He also writes for the Guardian and the New Statesman. 'Anyone who can write about places like Milton Keynes and Normal, Illinois and leave you gasping for more has got to have a rare talent' Bill Bryson