It is the evening of Wednesday 2 October, 1872. At the Reform Club, dinner service has finished, but the reading room remains full. To the incredulity of the members assembled, the “wealthy English gentleman” Phileas Fogg has just wagered £20,000 that he can circumnavigate the globe and be back in London in time for Christmas.
So begins Jules Verne’s tale of Victorian adventure, Around the World in Eighty Days. Now making its thirteenth appearance in our investment trust special, our take on Fogg’s globe-trot is, at this point, less an act of audacity than a calendar fixture. And while readers are welcome to bet their annual Isa allowance on its outcome, we don’t expect our voyage to cause a stir among the “rich and highly respectable personages” of London society.
But onward we voyage. In the best traditions of travel, our route is a chance to both expand existing horizons and discover the entirely new. And while the world is a smaller place than it was in the late nineteenth century – and, arguably, when we started this series in 2012 – London’s world of closed-end funds still offers a huge array of investment destinations.