ABSTRACT
It is a truism to say that travel writing, like travel itself, is generated by nostalgia. The nostalgic urge of travel writing derives in part from its reaction against those modernizing forces that are felt to compromise the specificity and/or authenticity of the world's different cultures. This chapter seeks to probe the ironies by looking at some different forms of nostalgia that circulate in contemporary travel writing, from the end of the Second World War to the present day. It describes the variety of elegiac modes of perception through which the West mourns the passing of a world that it itself has irrevocably altered. One of the tropes through which nostalgia is filtered in contemporary travel writing is the self-ironic figure of 'the English gentleman'. Nostalgia is unlikely to disappear as one very strong constituent of travel writing, particularly given its force as an engine of the commodity economy and consumer culture, under the guise of commemoration.
