Holidays from hell

Everyone thinks travel writing is a doddle. You soak up the sun for a couple of weeks and when you get home the words pour forth, dazzling the reader with wish-I-was-there images. Then you sit back and wait for the cheque to drop through the letterbox while planning your next safari or walk in the rainforest or flop on an Indian ocean beach, encouraged by bubbly travel PRs who tell you that the ‘views are breathtaking’, the food ‘to die for’ and the whole experience ‘the stuff of dreams’.

But there’s the problem. The vocabulary sucks. No form of writing is so riddled with clichés or lends itself so easily to the trite and outright banal as travel journalism. And forget a writer’s CV. I look after the travel pages at the Daily Mail and was chuffed to persuade a former Booker Prize-shortlisted author to write about his family holiday in Rome. All we needed was 1,200 jolly words. All we got was ‘a city of contrasts’ and a visit to the Coliseum that was variously ‘jaw-dropping’ or ‘breathtaking’ — I think there was even a ‘leaving the modern world behind’ in there somewhere. I didn’t know how to respond.

Dear Mr Rushdie,

Thank you for your piece but I wonder if you could give it a little rejig. It doesn’t seem to be up to your usual standards….

No, it wasn’t Rushdie, but you understand my dilemma. What I did instead was come up with a list of banned words and phrases, which I now send to writers whom I think won’t be offended and who might just be pleased. This list has become very long indeed and every week it gets longer. The latest offerings include: ‘spa heaven’, ‘nothing but the sound of waves’ and ‘bygone era’.