Excess Baggage - 26/09/2009

John McCarthy asks travel writer and historian William Dalrymple what place mysticism has in modern India and hears about some of the characters who are trying to keep it alive - like the maker of bronze idols whose son wants to work in computer engineering. JB Priestley's classic 1934 book 'English Journey' describes a trip through depression-hit England, from Southampton to Newcastle and back to London. On its republishing, John speaks to Tom Priestley, JB's son, about the impact the book had at the time and how places have changed since then. Also in the early 1930s, poet John Betjeman helped start the Shell Guides to Britain. His daughter Candida Lycett Green follows the family tradition of pointing out the beautiful and the interesting when she tells John McCarthy about her 100 favourite places amongst the small towns, buildings and landscapes in England.