Gil Prosser
What the locals tell their friends.
Gil Prosser writes the TravelBlis destination guides. Fourteen of them, one destination each, built on the same rule: every place named in a book was checked against that business’s own website, and the date of the check is printed beside it.
Gil Prosser is a pen name, and the series says so rather than inventing a life to go with the byline. What stands behind the name is the method and the register at the back of each book, both of which you can check yourself.
How the books are written
Candidate venues come from open mapping data. Every one is then opened and read on its own website, and only what the business says about itself goes into the book, quoted rather than paraphrased.
Roughly a third of them do not survive that. Across the series, more than 7,000 venue websites were read. They were dead, parked, or serving somebody else’s business entirely at rates ranging from 6 per cent in Tuscany to 41 per cent in Bali. Every failure is named in the back of the book with what the address now serves.
Nothing that could not be traced is written as fact. Opening hours are never taken from a third-party listing. Where a business contradicts itself, the book prints neither figure and says why.
14 destinations
The series
7 of the 14 are on sale. The rest are written and staged, and this list says which is which rather than implying they are all available.
Tuscany
On sale
Tuscany holds up for a long stay with a mixed group in a way most regions do not. This is the argument for it, the case for Chianti over Val d'Orcia, and the three situations where it is the wrong call.
Amalfi Coast
On sale
Vertical, hard to move around, and worth it if you plan for that rather than against it. Where to base yourself so the coast road does not eat the week, and why the ferry beats the car.
Marrakech and the Atlas
On sale
The riad faces inward by design, which is the architecture rather than a quirk. How to use the medina on foot, and why day-tripping the High Atlas wastes the best part of the trip.
Sri Lanka
On sale
The hill country you came to see was created by a fungus: coffee leaf rust arrived in 1869 and took the island's economy down within 20 years. Ten nights, two bases, and the train between them.
Mani and the Peloponnese
On sale
The Mani has 206 mapped places to eat and 17 websites between them. Not 8 per cent dead, which is what this series usually measures, but 8 per cent existing. A guide built for a peninsula that is almost entirely offline, and an argument about why the towers were never built against the Turks.
Bali
On sale
The temples are the irrigation system, and we know because in 1971 the government overrode them and the rice failed. Also: 952 venue websites checked and 41 per cent of them dead, the worst rate in the series and from the most developed place in it.
Algarve and Comporta
On sale
Two Portugals sold as one. They are 250km apart, they have almost nothing in common, and combining them casually turns into a drive that neither place repays.
Mallorca
Not published yet
An island with an unusually high rate of repeat visitors, which means the good addresses circulate by word of mouth and very little is arranged for a first-time visitor. How to get at them.
The Greek Cyclades
Not published yet
Everyone writes about Santorini and Mykonos. Naxos, Sifnos and Milos are where people who know the Cyclades actually go, and the ferry timetable shapes the whole trip.
Ibiza
Not published yet
The island has two entirely separate reputations and most guides only cover one. The north, the interior, and the case for when the loud end is genuinely the right answer.
The Dalmatian Coast
Not published yet
The islands reward a boat and punish a car, which reverses how most people plan it. Vis was closed to outsiders until 1989 and still feels apart.
Sardinia
Not published yet
The Costa Smeralda is about 30km of one coast, not the island. Where to go for the same water without the postcode, and the nuraghi, which exist nowhere else on earth.
Cote d'Azur
Not published yet
The Riviera has had 150 years to arrange itself around visitors, which is its strength and its problem. What the density buys you, and where to go inland when it stops being worth it.
Cyprus
Not published yet
Troodos, the Akamas and the eastern villages, written for someone who wants the island the diaspora goes back to rather than the one the package holidays sell.
Read one free
Every title in the series is in Kindle Unlimited, so a member can read any of them at no extra cost. How to read them free.