The e-mail home is an essential part of every gap-year back-packers journey. Where once the news of narrowly surviving a bus crash on the dirt-roads of India, waking up to gunfire in Honduras or fending off marriage proposals from complete strangers would have would have made it home only on the back of a slow-moving battered postcard, these days those tantalising details and terrible mistakes are now recorded immediately and distributed liberally for every friend and family member to wince at.

In Don't Tell Mum, Simon Hoggart and Emily Monk have collected together the funniest, most surreal, most alarming gap-year e-mails into a treasure-trove of correspondence. Accompanied by their wicked commentary, Don't Tell Mum gives the aspiring traveller the low-down on what not to do when trotting the globe.