Dancer Isadora Duncan travelled on the Orient Express wearing ”less than a veil, and that in the wrong place.” A French president “fell off” and was found wandering along the track in his pyjamas. King Boris of Bulgaria insisted upon driving the train through his country. Spies regularly spotted on board included exotic ‘artiste’ Mata Hari and Robert Baden Powell (posing as a butterfly collector).

The Orient-Express has always attracted glamorous and fascinating passengers, and, right up to today, few guests disembark without a story to tell. Whether it’s anecdotes swapped over cocktails in the Bar Car or fleeting conversations in the corridors, it is invariably the people, as much as the places, that provide the most interesting stories to take home.

As Orient-Express aficionado and 'Murder on the Orient Express' author Agatha Christie described it, “to travel by train is to see nature and human beings...in fact, to see life…”