THE Rolling Stones smell of fresh wood shavings. They have done ever since 1978 when Steve Goldsmith gave me his copy of Sticky Fingers while we were in the woodwork room at school. I associate Brown Sugar with the scent of cut timber.

Odd, isn't it, the way our minds link things? The same thing has happened to my books. When I see them on the shelf, they bring back the sights, sounds and smells of the places where I read them.

For me, travel is about books. It's about the liberation from the daily routine that allows me to read - really read. Not take little sips from books, but large, refreshing gulps. So everywhere I have visited is linked to the most absorbing book I read while I was there.

Tunisia is linked with James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense, Cyprus with Conor Cruise O'Brien's The Great Melody, the Nile (slightly absurdly) with Philip Gould's The Unfinished Revolution and so on. There is no particular logic to this, incidentally. François Duchêne's book on Jean Monnet's time in Brussels? I read that in Turkey. The Lake Palace in Udaipur is associated in my mind with a biography of Mitterrand, while the Loire is associated with a biography of Indira Gandhi.

(Actually, the Lake Palace also reminds me of William Hague. He told me that he went there on his honeymoon and was taken boating with Ffion on a moonlit evening. They were bathing in the tranquillity of the Indian night when a window flew open and a cheerful northern voice boomed out: “Greetings William Hague from Stockton-on-Tees.” Just thought I'd toss that story in.)

I have some pretty firm views about books and travel. The first is that in the eternal struggle between the weight of a suitcase and the need to have a heavy book with you, the book must always, always win. Years ago I made the mistake of leaving volume two of Jean Lacouture's biography of de Gaulle at home, having finished volume one. This was an error not to be repeated.

The same applies to books and hand luggage. When we're out on a day trip, I am always tempted to leave my big, thick volume back at the hotel. After all, we're going to be together as a family and sightseeing; there's no need to pack a book, is there? Sometimes I even give in to this temptation. It is always, and without exception, a momentary lapse that I later regret. Everyone goes sailing something turbulent/climbing something steep and there am I, waiting for their return in a café. Bookless.

Another firm view is that there is no such thing as a holiday book. When my head is in the office and my body is on the Underground, it is hard to read dense, complicated books. On vacation it is much easier. So, far from seeking easy reads at the airport, I think holidays are for tackling books that you wouldn't have the mental energy to cope with at any other time.

And this leads to a final strong opinion. I can't begin to understand those people who say that they don't like beach holidays because they can't stand doing nothing. Nothing? What do you mean nothing? I am not doing nothing when I sit back on a lovely deckchair in the shade. I'm reading.

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