There is 'luxury and inconvenience on the one hand, liberty, hard living and filth on the other'. So Edward Lear described the mysterious and often misunderstood country of Albania. Edward Lear's travels through Albania and Macedonia in 1848 came about when an outbreak of cholera closed off all other routes out of Salonica - the port in which he arrives as these journals begin - setting him off on this unusual adventure. His meticulous journals offer...