Carol’s latest book on Hanoi has just been published in Vietnam. Hanoi of a Thousand Years commemorates the 1000th anniversary of its founding as the capital in 2010.

‘I asked myself what I would want to know if I didn’t know the city at all,’ says Carol. ‘I structured the book simultaneously for the armchair reader or the tourist on foot, wandering with me through the streets with book in hand.

‘I delved into the stories of what palaces, temples and pagodas formerly occupied present-day sites, who where the heroes the streets were named after, who were those personages honoured in temples, and how did the performing arts unique to Vietnam develop?’

On the way, Carol found a tiny temple to a singer murdered by a jealous wife and the street where Hanoi’s famous irreverent 19th century lady poet lived. She discovered by women in the past were never allowed to become water puppeteers and why ‘tube houses’ in the Old Town may stretch back for 30 metres.

‘For me, as I hope it will be for readers, it was a good deep wallow in Vietnamese culture!’ she says.