48 hours appears to be ample time to spend in most places if we are to believe the ‘48 Hours in’ articles on the Independent and Lonely Planet websites. Channel 4 series Travel Man: 48 Hours in reaffirms this and, for once, with respect to Bucharest, I would tend to agree. There are ‘few real sights’ to see, Craig Turp concedes in the Introduction, meaning ‘a weekend is enough’. This partly explains why Lonely Planet has not yet penned a city guide and why – given the unavailability of this title at Waterstones – those interested in visiting have had to rely on television presenters Michael Palin, Dan Cruickshank and Michael Portillo as tour guides. As informative as the three indubitably are, seasoned travellers wanting further insight into this ‘oddly endearing messy capital’ (Palin), which contains ‘the epitome of Big Brother architecture’ (Cruickshank’s description of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Casa Poporului) as well as ‘its own Arc de Triomphe’ (Portillo), should look no further than Turp. He is a British-born, Bucharest based author of Bucharest In Your Pocket: the number one, bi-monthly (online) guide that should be consulted alongside this third edition which is now seven years old. That notwithstanding, the unpretentious prose and lavish illustrations of Thomas Cook Pocket Guides render them a refreshing read compared with, say, Lonely Planet booklets, although the former should follow the latter’s lead and reposition their ‘Suggested Itineraries’ and ‘Top 10 Attractions’ (concentrated around the scar-marked Piața Revoluției and Calea Victoriei) in a fourth edition. Until such time, however, potential visitors are advised to read R.G. Waldeck’s Athene Palace Bucharest: Hitler’s “New Order” Comes to Rumania, a work referenced by Turp, together with Robert D. Kaplan’s In Europe’s Shadow: Two Cold Wars and a Thirty-Year Journey Through Romania and Beyond, a work that should be referenced by Turp in any forthcoming volume.