It was at the Reform Club in London, from which Phileas Fogg once legendarily set out on a journey around the world. That night, I was addressing a tuxedo’d audience, discussing the many sights and sounds of Xinjiang province, that vital link in international trade routes that, to me, was the essence of the so-called “Silk Road”. I spoke about the ruined cities to be found in the Sea of Death; the bright-eyed angel paintings in desert shrines; the whirling storms of black sand that wreathed the jade mines in the foothills.

Ilse Gertrud Ingeborg Schwepcke (née Haus) insisted on sitting next to me at dinner. She wanted to hear more about the breakaway Muslim realm of Kashgaria (oddly celebrated in street names in East London), the red-haired, mummified “Beauty of Loulan”, the secrets of silk and the fate of the Nestorian Christians. I revealed that I would shortly be heading off with a National Geographic film crew to see it all up close, in season two of Route Awakening.

Ilse seized my hand.

“I wish,” she said. “I wish I could go with you.”

I often bore that in mind as I struggled to eat a newly slaughtered goat in a dusty barnyard, or as I was showered with ordure in the middle of a tribal mud-fight. I imagined her charming the local villagers with a joke delivered half in French, or suggesting that Chicken Kiev might make a better dinner than a cow’s grass-filled intestines.

But we both knew it was impossible. At the time, she was already in her late eighties, a director at Haus Publishing, the company set up by her daughter Barbara, with her mother’s maiden name in the title and Ilse herself as a director. Not long after the company started operating, Ilse became the curator of a quirky list of travel books, in the course of which she would sign me up to write about Finland, Tokyo, Beijing and, of course, the Silk Road.

In an age when so many travel books seem like checklists for pointless selfies, Ilse’s commissions resolutely reflected a love of travel itself, a fascination with the remote and the strange, a refusal to pander to the mainstream. So few modern tourists “travel” at all, but Ilse’s books invited us all to voyage far beyond the sunset, even if we never leave our armchairs.

She shepherded and curated much work of enduring quality, although I am sure she would agree, her best production was probably her daughter Barbara. Or possibly that book about Istanbul. No. Definitely Barbara.