South from Granada, by Gerald Brenan

It isn't as bad as it looks - I finished reading this some time ago, and the delay has been in the writing about it, not the reading. It is true to say, however, that this isn't going to make it up into my top ten books - or even my top 100. Indeed, it may find its way back to a charity bookshop (and I only very very rarely dispose of books).

I bought it because I like the part of the world he is writing about and hoped it would be an antidote to the "Driving over lemons" style of travel writing (DOL is set in the same part of the world and is by no means the worst example of its kind, so it may be unfair to pick on it as a comparison). Gerald Brenan lived in Spain at intervals between 1920 to 1934, going there after being demobbed after the First World War. It quickly becomes clear that Brenan is no "ordinary Joe" - public school, offficer class and a circle of acquaintances which enable him to devote one chapter to a visit from Lytton Strachey and another to a visit from Virginia Woolf.

I found the whole book strangely flat and humourless. I am not sure but that I didn't enjoy DOL more.