‘In Bogota even the bootblacks quoted Proust’

British travel writing has doolally bits

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

In Reputations, Juan Gabriel Vasquez’s slim, exquisite novel about one of Colombia’s leading political cartoonists, Javier Mallarino the cartoonist thinks: “Who had said that in Bogota even the bootblacks quoted Proust? Must have been some Englishman…only an Englishman would be capable of perpetrating such a pronouncement”.

The great man had just concluded an encounter with a courteous bootblack so his flattering thoughts about bootblacks in Bogota were not surprising. But the idea that only someone from Britain would comment on Proust-quoting bootblacks was a reminder of the British contribution — quixotic, eccentric, inimitable — to travel writing.

It’s fair to say British commentary on strange places, peoples and cultures has its share of insights and oddities (some more delightful than others).

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