Born on this day in London in 1815.

The prolific novelist also wrote travel books, one of which inspired Paul Theroux to write one of the wisest things I've ever read about the genre.

In an essay in Granta magazine in 1989, Theroux quoted a passage from Trollope's The West Indies and the Spanish Main and at the end of it wrote: "Something human had happened, and Trollope recorded it: that, it seemed to me, was the essence of good travel writing."

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Karen Blixen, better known by her pen name Isak Dinesen, was born on this day in 1885 in Rungsted, Denmark. Her most famous book, Out of Africa, is a beautiful evocation of her life on a coffee plantation in Kenya between the two world wars.

In Bonaire last year I saw a tourist wearing a T-shirt printed with a quote from Dinesen: "The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea."

Two other quotes of hers that I like are:

"Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever."

And:

"God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road."

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