. Who does not love to travel? We are all Marco Polos under the skin, dreaming of far-flung voyages with all the fervour of a nineteenth-century romantic. In 1945 and 1946, world travel was not easy. Red tape, visas and restrictions inhibited enthusiasm; a number of countries in Europe and Asia were even hors de tourisme. Within a few years, however, tourists in numbers unprecedented were once more flooding every country of East and West. American wanderers abroad could be found from Scotland to Saragossa, from Baden Baden to Barcelona. They ogled the Mona Lisa on her velvet background, they were generous and enthusiastic wherever they went. Germans, inveterate travellers before the war, have begun to appear again in Mediterranean watering places (they all have Mediterranean souls), snapping Zeiss cameras and enviably conversing in the native tongue. Switzerland, ever the Mecca of middle-class English tourists, still finds them invading the Engadine and Interlaken valleys in Norman droves and crowding the sweet shops at tea time. The French venture more in the direction of their Latin neighbours than towards cultures radically different from their own. Far to the East are even more cxotic splendours - Japan. Burma, India. Bangkok. Quivering in the heat visitors make their pilgrimage to Angkor Vat and the Taj contemplating the enigmatic ruins of a great civilization that mysteriously vanished and the splendours beauty left by a now vanished army. Those left behind vast stone buildings and Buddhas whose smiles have a chilling sense of eternity. . An excerpt from Cecil Beaton’s scrapbook of Travels Image courtesy: ‘Summertime’ (1955) by David Lean starring Katharine Hepburn.