Far and away : the essential A.A. Gill

A.A. Gill was an exceptional writer. Savage and compassionate in equal measure, he was always opinionated, always original, often surprising, and his writing illuminated from the page. This book, the second posthumous collection of his journalism, brings together pieces from near and far.

He was ferociously well travelled, and once wrote that for all our ability to cross the world at will, 'abroad is as foreign and funny and strange and shocking as it ever was, and our need to know our neighbours every bit as great'.

This is a book about meeting those neighbours. Wherever he was - in London or the Kalahari, Benidorm or Beirut, with the glitterati in St Tropez or the nightclubs of Moscow, in the ruins of earthquake-struck Haiti or in a camp with the displaced Rohingya, he had the ability to pin down the heart of a story and render it unforgettable. He was a peerless writer about food, and so we also get to join him at tables all around the world, from a motorway service station cafe to the sophisticated delights of El Bulli.

Fearless in his judgement, often provocative, and endlessly thought-provoking, he had the gift of making his readers see the world in a different way. And, always, of making them laugh. This collection is another opportunity to marvel at a master at work.