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Hello and welcome to the Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor

of The Spectator. This week, my guest is the travel writer Sarah Wheeler, whose new book is a memoir of her

travelling life, glowing still, a woman's life on the road.

Now, Sarah, what starts from me with the title?

Because glowing still sounds immensely upbeat when one sees it on the cover of the book.

And it sounds like it's a kind of continuing vitality and excitement

and still all that energy.

And then I find the quote, which you quote J.A. Baker's The Peregrine,

in 1960s environmental book,

where he says,

toxic chemicals have produced, quote,

a dying world like Mars, but glowing still,

which casts the title in a slightly more melancholy light.

What was it the made you choose that?

I think it's about the best one can hope for when one crashes through the barrier of 60, don't you, Sam?

Although you wouldn't know, I'm sure.

Yeah, I felt that it gave some hope when the large part of one's life has gone by.

I was thinking about Martin Amos, who said that when you turn 60,

you've got this whole new subject that didn't exist before, the past.

And that was very much on my mind when I embarked on this book,

which, as you say, is a look back at my travelling life from my 20s,

...