Having trained as an architect and worked as a barman in London (he was a master at putting the little shamrock atop a Guinness), cinema cleaner, croissant chef and deckhand on a fishing trawler, Charles gave up all that glamour to draw maps for Lonely Planet. Thankfully that lead him to travel writing and he’s since contributed to 15 of the company’s best-selling tomes. In his bottom drawer at home in the Adelaide Hills you’ll find a 320,000-word epic entitled The Great Unpublished American Road Novel. It is still unpublished.

Charles Rawlings-Way anonymously reviewed: