It is hard to interest people in ex-Soviet countries whose names contain the letter ‘z’. I tried and failed. That being so, I instinctively approve of James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello for writing The Oil Road, their account of a journey out of Azerbaijan.

They follow Azeri oil from the Caspian Sea to the filling stations of central Europe. By car, train, bus and foot, they trace the path it takes through a pipeline along the southern flank of the old Soviet Union, across remote eastern Turkey, to the shores of the Mediterranean. They