Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

The "negative" touristic writing proposed some two decades ago by the then Daily Telegraph travel journalist Digby Anderson didn't catch on, unfortunately, but it may be ripe for a revival, given the increasing badness of airlines and the overcrowding of famous places. Anderson wanted journalists to discourage travellers from going to certain destinations by doing that rare thing, telling the truth. "Taormina may have been pleasant once; it isn't now," would be a typical sentence in travel writing if Anderson had had his way.

A handful of travel writers were influenced by Anderson's ideas, most notably Paul Theroux. Whilst in Belfast, Theroux notes: "It was so awful, I wanted to stay." If "it really was one of the nastiest cities in the world, surely then it was worth spending some time in, for horror interest?" Walking around the British coast, Theroux hit his negative stride:

"The rock pools of Devon and Cornwall had been violated, and Dunwich had sunk into the sea, and Prestatyn was littered, and Sunderland was unemployed. Oddest of all, there were hardly any ships on a coast that had once been crammed with them. 'Once a great port,' the guidebook always said of the seaside towns."

Patrick White, travelling in Greece, told the awful truth in a way that would have delighted Anderson:

"Gythion turned out to be a somewhat unprepossessing town, with?some of the worst plumbing and food. There is a small island, Crainai, where Paris and Helen are said to have enjoyed each other after their elopement. Today the island is linked to the town by a causeway?the Mecca of German hippies with camper vans. It was littered with rubbish and human shit. Still, we enjoyed climbing the terraces of Gythion, asking directions and general information of friendly women, and sipping our ouzo in a cool breeze beside a sea which smelled unavoidably of sewage."

In defence of his "negative" approach to travel writing, Digby Anderson pointed out that critics of music and literature have not shied away from offering negative opinions in the cause of improving public taste. Telling the truth was and is seen as the best way of doing this. Why should travel writing be different, he asked.