Paper escapes

Steven King selects his best travel books of 2024

- Steven King

Reschio: The First Thousand Years

Steven King (Rizzoli, £85)

I KNOW, I know—I wrote this one, so I probably shouldn’t be writing about it here. It’s included on this list at the request of COUNTRY LIFE’s kind-hearted Travel Editor. You can decide for yourself about the merits of the book. The merits of its subject, the Reschio of the title, a large estate in Italy’s rural Umbria, however, are beyond dispute, and have nothing to do with me. (Best-case scenario, from my point of view: go to Reschio, pick up a copy of the book when of view: go to Reschio, pick up a copy of the book when you’re there and leave with ecstatic feelings about both.)

The estate is outrageously beautiful and historically rich, even by Italian standards. Despite its out-of-the-way location, a great deal of life has swept by, just beyond or occasionally within its borders. The recent transformation of its 11th-century castle from a fortress into the chicest hotel in the country— from a place designed to keep people out to one intended to welcome them in—is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Fifth Avenue: 200 Years of Stories and Legends

Julie Satow (Assouline, £85)

EYE-CANDY in the shape of a coffee-table book —why not? There’s no arguing with the point made by Jay McInerney, in his characteristically F. Scott Fitzgerald-tinted introduction, that this famous thoroughfare, which runs dead straight from Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village to 142nd Street in Harlem, serves as an emblem of all the ‘glamour and grandeur’ of Manhattan. (Vik Muniz’s diamond-studded night scene, reproduced on pages 284–285, provides a striking visual correlative to this perception.)