SOURCE: Morris, Jan. “Don't Be Ashamed to Go on a Bus Tour.” New Statesman (6 May 2002): 44-5.

In the following review, Morris views The Art of Travel as “an elegant and entertaining evocation of all the sensations of travel,” and as a manual for maximizing the travel experience.

This entirely delightful book [The Art of Travel] has an ambiguous title. Does it refer to the skill of travelling properly, or does it mean the matter of travel as the subject of art? A bit of each, it turns out, but it might better be called The Philosophy of Travel, because I think that's what it is really meant to be.

Most philosophers, in my experience, write a modicum of rubbish, and de Botton is no exception. He is a genuine master of the truism, a virtuoso of the obvious. I doubt if he has written a dull sentence in...