John Gimlette

The world’s best wrecks and ruins

Oliver Smith takes us on a tour of train graveyards, bunkers, ghost towns, crumbling palaces – and a 7,000-bedroom hotel in North Korea that never even opened

Sans Souci Palace, ‘the Versailles of the Caribbean’, built by Henri I of Haiti in 1810-13 [Alamy]

  • Atlas of Abandoned Places: A Journey Through the World’s Forgotten Wonders

    Oliver Smith

    Mitchell Beazley, pp. 224, £20

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Churchill had his black dog tailing him around. I used to have black horses galloping through my head. They careered around out of control, rendering me so anxious that I couldn’t sleep the night before I was due to heave myself into the saddle as a civilian support rider for the Household Cavalry. So the

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