Cities, empires, landscapes and the long road through Europe.

📚The Diary of a Young Girl — Anne Frank

Written in hiding in Amsterdam between 1942 and 1944. One of the most widely read accounts of the Second World War, and deeply connected to the city visited on Day 2 of the tour.

📚The Miniaturist — Jessie Burton

Set in seventeenth-century Amsterdam during the Dutch Golden Age — the period of Rembrandt, canal houses and merchant wealth that still shapes the city today.

📚The Undutchables — Colin White & Laurie Boucke

A gently affectionate guide to Dutch habits, contradictions and national character — exactly the kind of book that makes you look differently at Amsterdam as you walk through it.

📚The Pillars of the Earth — Ken Follett

The story of the building of a cathedral in twelfth-century England — but the medieval world it inhabits is recognisably the same one you see in Bruges: the same architecture, the same faith, the same social order. An enormous and deeply absorbing novel, and one of the best introductions to medieval Europe ever written.

📚Paris: The Biography of a City — Colin Jones

A layered portrait of the city beneath the boulevards, monuments and neighbourhoods experienced during the tour.

📚A Year in the Merde — Stephen Clarke

A British man navigating Parisian life, French bureaucracy and the particular logic of French culture. Warm, funny and more accurate about daily Paris than most serious guides.

📚The Great Nation — Colin Jones

France from Louis XV to Napoleon — the full arc of the 18th century, from the gilded world of Versailles through the Enlightenment to the Revolution and its aftermath. Essential context for everything the tour sees in Paris.

📚A Tale of Two Cities — Charles Dickens

Revolution, fear and sacrifice, connecting London and Paris during one of Europe's most turbulent periods.

📚The Hare with Amber Eyes — Edmund de Waal

Family, art and memory moving through Paris, Vienna and the upheavals of twentieth-century Europe.

📚The Rhine — Ben Coates

History, identity and landscape carried along one of Europe's great rivers.

📚All Quiet on the Western Front — Erich Maria Remarque

A deeply human account of the First World War from the perspective of a young German soldier.

📚The Book Thief — Markus Zusak

Ordinary life, fear and small acts of humanity in Nazi Germany.

📚Why the Germans Do It Better — John Kampfner

A British journalist's examination of modern German society — how a country that caused so much destruction rebuilt itself into one of Europe's most functional democracies. Thought-provoking context for the Germany days of the tour.

📚The World of Yesterday — Stefan Zweig

A personal remembrance of Vienna and the cultured European world that disappeared during the two world wars.

📚The Radetzky March — Joseph Roth

The fading Habsburg Empire seen through one family and the slow collapse of an old European order.

📚A Room with a View — E. M. Forster

Florence, travel and the gradual loosening of social convention.

📚The Agony and the Ecstasy — Irving Stone

A fictionalised but vivid account of Michelangelo and the artistic world of Renaissance Italy.

📚SPQR — Mary Beard

Ancient Rome explained through people, politics and the development of the Roman world.

📚La Bella Figura — Beppe Severgnini

An Italian journalist writing for foreign readers about what makes Italy — and Italians — the way they are. Affectionate, self-aware and often very funny. The best single book for understanding what you're actually looking at during the Italy days.

📚Under the Tuscan Sun — Frances Mayes

An American writer restoring a farmhouse in the Tuscan hills — the landscape, markets, food and the gradual rhythm of Italian life. One of the most widely read books about Italy, and it captures something real about the country's texture.

📚Pompeii — Robert Harris

A thriller set on the day Vesuvius erupts in 79 AD — told through the eyes of a Roman engineer racing against time. Gripping, historically precise and directly connected to the Pompeii visit on Day 12.

📚The Alps — Stephen O'Shea

A journey through the geography, communities and history of the mountain range that has shaped central Europe.

📚Heidi — Johanna Spyri

More than a children's story: a lasting image of mountain life, displacement and belonging.

📚Why Switzerland? — Jonathan Steinberg

A thoughtful introduction to the political and cultural character of Switzerland.

📚Swiss Watching — Diccon Bewes

A British writer who moved to Switzerland unpacks the country's quirks, contradictions and surprising complexity. Warm, observant and a good companion for the Swiss days of the tour.

📚The Shortest History of Europe — John Hirst

A clear way to place the churches, empires, revolutions and political changes encountered during the tour into one wider story.

📚Postwar — Tony Judt

A substantial but rewarding account of how Europe rebuilt itself after 1945.

📚The Europeans — Orlando Figes

Art, railways and cultural exchange in nineteenth-century Europe, when travel began drawing the continent closer together.

📚Neither Here Nor There — Bill Bryson

Bryson retracing a youthful grand tour of Europe — Belgium, Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland and beyond. Funny, observant and covering almost exactly the same ground as the Grand European. Ideal travelling companion reading.

📚The Century Trilogy — Ken Follett

Fall of Giants (WWI), Winter of the World (WWII) and Edge of Eternity (Cold War to the fall of the Berlin Wall) — three epic novels following five families across Europe through the twentieth century. Germany, France, Britain, Russia: the same cities you pass through on the tour, at their most turbulent. Each book is long, but most readers find them impossible to put down.

🎬In Bruges

Two hitmen hiding out in Bruges, doing very little apart from arguing and looking at medieval art. Dark, funny and filmed entirely on location — every street, canal and square is recognisable from Day 1 of the tour. Note: strong language and adult themes throughout — not for everyone, but those who enjoy dark comedy will find it very rewarding.

🎬The Fault in Our Stars

Set partly in Amsterdam, with the Anne Frank House at its emotional centre. A lighter watch but the Amsterdam sequences are vivid and the connection to the city is genuine.

🎬Midnight in Paris

A playful journey through the city's artistic past and the temptation to imagine another era as more beautiful than one's own.

🎬Amélie

A romanticised Paris, but one filled with neighbourhood detail, cafés and the particular atmosphere of Montmartre.

🎬Moulin Rouge!

Fantasy rather than history, yet closely tied to the mythology of Montmartre, cabaret and Paris after dark.

🎬Marie Antoinette

Visually striking and deliberately modern in tone, capturing the isolation and excess associated with Versailles.

🎬The Lives of Others

A restrained and powerful portrait of surveillance, conformity and private life in East Germany.

🎬Good Bye, Lenin!

Humour and family memory during the rapid changes surrounding German reunification.

🎬All Quiet on the Western Front

A bleak reminder of the human cost behind the battlefields, memorials and national histories of Europe.

🎬The Third Man

Post-war Vienna through shadows, ruined streets and moral uncertainty.

🎬Before Sunrise

Vienna experienced through conversation, movement and the temporary intimacy of travel.

🎬Woman in Gold

Art, memory and restitution, centred on Gustav Klimt's Vienna and the legacy of Nazi theft.

🎬The Sound of Music

Romanticised and familiar, but still inseparable from how many travellers first imagine Austria.

🎬North Face

A dramatic account of early attempts to climb the Eiger, capturing both the danger and fascination of the Alps.

🎬The Eiger Sanction

A very different kind of mountain film, but visually connected to the scale and drama of the Swiss landscape.

🎬Roman Holiday

Rome through movement, discovery and the pleasure of briefly escaping ordinary life.

🎬La Dolce Vita

A darker, more complicated portrait of glamour, celebrity and post-war Rome.

🎬A Room with a View

Florence, art and emotional awakening through the eyes of British travellers.

🎬Life Is Beautiful

Humour, love and tragedy set against the persecution of Italian Jews during the Second World War.

🎬The Great Beauty

Rome as spectacle, memory and contradiction — magnificent, excessive and difficult to fully understand.

🎬To Catch a Thief

Hitchcock's 1955 thriller set entirely on the French Riviera and in Monaco — Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and corniche roads above the Mediterranean. Watched before Days 16–17, it feels like a different version of the same landscape.

🎬Grace of Monaco

The story of Grace Kelly's years as Princess of Monaco. Stylised rather than strictly biographical, but strongly tied to the principality visited on Day 16.

📺Rome — HBO (2 seasons)

Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Octavian and the fall of the Republic — told through the lives of two ordinary soldiers caught in extraordinary events. Stunning production, historically grounded and essential viewing before or after the Roman days of the tour. On Max. Note: contains graphic violence and adult content throughout — this is HBO at its most ambitious, and its most explicit.

📺Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance — PBS (4 episodes)

A documentary series covering the Medici banking dynasty from Cosimo through to Lorenzo the Magnificent — the patronage, the politics and the art that defined Renaissance Florence. Directly connected to what you see on Day 15. Available on PBS and YouTube.

📺Babylon Berlin — Netflix (4 seasons)

Weimar Republic Berlin in the late 1920s — jazz, political violence, inflation and the years before the rise of the Nazis. Beautifully made and deeply atmospheric. Strong context for the Germany days of the tour.

📺Dark — Netflix (3 seasons)

A German-language science fiction thriller involving time travel, small-town secrets and interconnected family histories across different eras. Dense and rewarding. Nothing to do with the tour specifically — just excellent German television.

📺Emily in Paris — Netflix

An American marketing executive navigating Paris, French culture and its various contradictions. Lighter viewing than most of this list — but the Paris streets, cafés and arrondissements are genuinely recognisable, and it captures something about the city's self-image.

📺Lupin — Netflix

A French thriller built around Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief — set across Paris landmarks including the Louvre, Montmartre and the streets seen on Days 19–20. Sharp, fast-moving and very French.

🎵Édith Piaf — La Vie en rose

🎵Charles Aznavour — La Bohème

🎵Jacques Brel — Ne me quitte pas

🎵Offenbach — Galop infernal

🎵Debussy — Clair de lune

🎵Beethoven — Symphony No. 9

🎵Bach — Air on the G String

🎵Wagner — Ride of the Valkyries

🎵Marlene Dietrich — Lili Marlene

🎵Johann Strauss II — The Blue Danube

🎵Mozart — Eine kleine Nachtmusik

🎵Schubert — Ave Maria

🎵Falco — Vienna Calling

🎵Rossini — Overture to William Tell

🎵Traditional alphorn music

🎵Puccini — O mio babbino caro

🎵Verdi — Va, pensiero

🎵Dean Martin — On an Evening in Roma

🎵Lucio Dalla — Caruso

🎵Andrea Bocelli — Con te partirò

🎵Offenbach — for spectacle

🎵Édith Piaf — for memory

🎵French café music