Walking In Ruins is Geoff Nicholson‘s response to those who ask him to name a favourite walk. He walks by ruins ancient and modern, picturesque and mundane and he reports on what he sees with his eye for the unusual, and his habitual erudition and humour.

Ruins are his muse. So he spends the book doing exactly what its title suggests. Locations include an abandoned Los Angeles zoo, now inhabited by two homeless men, a Sheffield housing estate whose road layout survives even though its houses don’t, and a desert town that’s been, er, deserted. Nicholson keeps finding shoes there, though never a matching pair. (The Spectator)