Meet the Tugas

Christopher Jones arrived in Portugal as one of hundreds of thousands of expats and stayed to write the book some of them needed. Meet the Tugas is a three-year road trip through the country's history, landscape, and soul - from the fortresses of the Minho built to keep the Spanish out, to the Azorean volcanoes that nearly kept Jones himself from returning. Along the way, he covers thousand of years of invasions, empires, earthquakes, and revolutions with the enthusiasm of a convert and the deadpan timing of someone who once ate two hundred snails and paused to calculate the protein. The humour is constant and disarming - monks improve Roman wine by deciding the blood of Christ tastes better at a lower proof; sandwiches are frantically assembled with frozen butter atop a volcano. But beneath the wit sits serious research and genuine affection. This is travel writing that makes you laugh, then makes you book a flight.