Enjoy the highs and lows of magnificent journeys without leaving the comfort of your armchair

Apart from a day trip to Boulogne with my mum when I was seven, I didn’t go abroad until I turned 18. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin "I have a vision of the Songlines stretching across the continents and ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song; and that these trails must reach back, in time and space…" Bruce Chatwin’s beautiful, bizarre book is an absurdly ambitious attempt to unlock the secret truths of Aboriginal culture – and although it ultimately fails to fulfil this quixotic quest, there are moments of extraordinary poetry and profundity along the way. “No matter how horrendous the last journey we never give up hope for the next one, God knows why.” open image in gallery A dry ship to the mountains by Daniel Farson Journalist, broadcaster, author, pub landlord and merchant seaman, Daniel Farson’s life was full of incident, and his famous father, the American foreign correspondent Negley Farson, was even more intrepid. open image in gallery Old glory by Jonathan Raban When Jonathan Raban was seven he read Huckleberry Finn, and that joyful novel made him yearn to follow Mark Twain’s hero down the Mississippi. The last wrestlers by Marcus Trower My good friend Marcus Trower wanted to write a book about wrestling – the world’s oldest, most elemental sport – and ended up writing a book about modern masculinity.