I bought an old photo album at a yard sale a few years ago hoping to discover something unusual mixed in with the standard black-and-white Brownie shots of men in out-of-date suits standing next to women in astoundingly dowdy-looking dresses, as they all stare at the camera looking like they had just caught Junior dipping snuff down at the pool hall. What is it about old photographs that makes everyone look as if they are members of the Carter Family about to eat sushi for the first time?

When I flipped through the pages at home, it turned out to contain no photographs at all. Carefully attached to each page was a blank piece of hotel stationery from the ‘30s, the era of steamer trunks and boaters.

The Bedford Hotel, Southampton Row, London. The Cecil Hotel, Bruxelles. The American Hotel, Amsterdam. The Grand Royal Hotel, Sorrento. The Darmstadter-Hof, Heidelberg. The Grand Hotel Suisse Terminus, Turin. The Hotel Rossli, Luzern. Hotel Metropole, Nice. The S.S. De Grasse, French Line.

It was a diary without words, mysterious and telling at the same time. Was it the memorabilia of a Grand Tour or a spy’s scrapbook? Not a word about life aboard the De Grasse in the days when it took seven days simply to cross the ocean. Today, seven days aboard a ship would be the vacation, then it was simply the start of one.