My friend and fellow travel writer Sophia Dembling responded to my birthday wishes to Jonathan Raban and Colin Thubron with a little story about the time she did a phone interview with Raban.

She found him "surly and intimidating," and he chewed her out for calling him a "travel writer."

I met Raban in Seattle in the mid-90s and also found him unpleasant and imperious. Wrtiers sometimes are but, in my experience, travel writers aren't.

Jan Morris has made "kindness" something of a theme, not just in her work but in her life. The first time I met her, at the Key West Literary Seminar in 1991, she apologized for keeping me waiting for our interview. I had waited for about five minutes, watching her graciously talk to admirers and sign her books.

Pico Iyer is another travel writer who is keenly aware of the feelings of others, as befits a man whose most recent book is about the Dalai Lama.

Colin Thubron, when I interviewed him in Philadelphia a number of years ago, was modest and gracious, a true English gentleman. Even Paul Theroux, so often thought of as snide and condescending, was, during our meeting, friendly and open, one of the few people I've ever interviewed who actually asked me questions.

Raban, for some reason, stands out from the crowd. But then, he doesn't want to be thought of as a travel writer anyway.