On his journeys through Spain, Howse  remains the self-contained outsider. Compared to those of a travel writer like Colin Thubron, his contacts with the local population are minimal. He hints that he may have narrowly missed jumping into a void at the castle in Chinchilla or suffered from eating raw garlic for breakfast, but we cannot be sure. He even refers to himself in the third person when mentioning his previous book, A Pilgrim in Spain. For him, as for Pascal, "le moi est haïssable".

His appeal to the reader lies in his deft visual observation; in seductive digressions away from his immediate impressions as a traveller, whether about the vulture-loving soldier Willoughby Verner or the Nobel Prize-winning histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal; and his encyclopaedic knowledge of matters historical, literary, artistic, architectural, botanical, theological, ornithological, etymological and gastronomical (including a recipe for acorn pie).

The amount of information imparted is immense. To make digestion easier, the ten chapters are sensibly split into sections, each of which can be read like a newspaper column. The text is well served by maps, illustrations and coloured plates. There are one or two missing accents on place names, irritating in a book so meticulously researched, but an improvement on A Pilgrim in Spain.

Having started in the Pyrenees and covered thousands of miles, Howse comes to rest in the centre, at Chamartín station in Madrid. His has been an illuminating odyssey through a country which he obviously loves. He rekindles the desire to visit Spain and provides a charmingly erudite companion for the journey.