A Journey Around My Room

What do you do when you find yourself imprisoned in your room for six weeks? Xavier de Maistre, a twenty-seven-year-old Frenchman found himself in this uneasy situation when he was arrested in Turin after a duel, in the Spring of 1790. But even confined to his room, as he was, with only a butler and a dog for company, de Maistre managed to fill his time by embarking on a journey around his bedroom, later writing an account of what he had seen, and eight years later, making a second journey, this time travelling at night, and making it as far as the window ledge. Whether travelling from his bed to his sofa, or even to his mirror, he wears his 'travelling outfit', consisting of his favourite pink and blue pyjamas. Out of his forced reclusion comes a delightful fantasy, and de Maistre's new take on the travel literature of the past went on to inspire many future writers, such as Marcel Proust. 'De Maistre's work springs from a profound and suggestive insight: that the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to. If only we could apply a travelling mindset to our own locales, we might find these places becoming no less interesting than the high mountain passes and jungles of South America' - From the Foreword by Alain de Botton 'De Maistre...found the utmost strangeness in himself and the things he had taken for granted.' The Times