World

Travelling is not the same as going on holiday, says Ziauddin Sardar, the writer, broadcaster and cultural critic He recommends five books about travellers in the Muslim world—from 14th-century Morocco to 20th-century Damascus by way of Indonesia.

Best-selling author Thomas Keneally explains that the Cold War biographies couldn’t afford to say that Stalin was attractive, or that Lenin was magnetic, but they were, because otherwise people wouldn't have followed them. He picks some great introductions to Revolutionary Russia.

The journalist and Labour peer, formerly adviser to British Prime Minister James Callaghan, explains his selection of five books about British Politics. Touches on subjects from climate change to the British constitution

The award-winning journalist and author says she laughed out loud when she read Greg Mortenson’s line that if he was killed in Pakistan, he knew it would be in a car accident and not by a terrorist

Labour peer and professor emeritus at the London School of Economics, Meghnad Desai, marvels at the Indian people’s incredible tenacity for democracy and self-advancement since independence in 1947. He picks the best books on India.

Award-winning reporter and novelist Vanora Bennett says there are no superlatives too superlative for Anna Politkovskaya, who, after three books and innumerable investigative reporting trips to Chechnya, was murdered in Moscow

The acclaimed author discusses the Polar Regions. She says an African In Greenland is the best book ever written on Greenland - the story of a man from Togo who went there in the 1960s

The Sunday Telegraph’s chief foreign correspondent on the dangers of being a journalist in the Iraq war. "When a little of group of kids wandered up and said, 'Hello mister, how are you?', it was time to leave"

Historian discusses five books on one of the world’s most enigmatic and dangerous places. "The atmosphere inside the Khyber is certainly very tense. You don’t see people strutting around having a nice time"

Activist Harry Wu spent 19 years in Mao's labour camps and devoted years to uncovering what goes on in China's 'laogai' or 'reform-through-labour' camps. He picks five books showing China's darker side.