Colour scheme is green and yellow dual carriageways, green primaries, crimson secondaries, blue motorways.Ease of use: Clear type, good compromise between scale and page size, clear overlaps, rather heavy to handle.Detail: Good on antiquities and rivers, cryptic on tourist attractions – gives symbols instead of names. Very colourful, green primary routes, blue motorways.Ease of use: Very small type for minor place names, populated areas are visually congested, dual carriageway intersections accurately depicted (the only atlas to do this), very clear overlaps, each page covers a large area.Detail: Excellent, with a multitude of villages and places of interest, heights and woodland, good key.Extra features: First-class London, Birmingham and Manchester approach maps, town, port, airport and Channel tunnel terminal plans, sparse route planner.Verdict: Good value with lots of information, but rather hard to read in mid-journey.Ordnance Survey Motoring Atlas 1995, pounds 6.99. An atlas from the publishers of the familiar city street maps, also available in hardback at pounds 9.95.Format: Stapled, 151/2 x 101/2in, 4 miles to the inch. Flimsy feel with thin paper, but a good buy if you feel you can live with the Sun logo in your car.A-Z Great Britain Road Atlas 1995, pounds 6.95. No key.Extra features: Detailed central London map, but limited area.

Detailed route planning maps.Verdict: Basic atlas at a bargain price. We selected six of the most widely available – in garages and bookshops – and have assessed them here (shown in 100 per cent scale), in ascending order of price.
The Sun Road Atlas Britain 1995, pounds 3.99. This is a cheap print run (slightly out of register, too) of a familiar Bartholomew atlas, itself available in hardback for pounds l2.99.Format: Stapled, 15 x 11in, 3 miles to the inch. Green tint all over, green primary routes, blue motorways.Ease of use: Easy to follow, pages large enough to avoid excessive turning over, presentation could be brighter, page overlaps clearly marked.Detail: Minor road shapes are rather approximate, but tourist attractions well marked, and shows heights and woodland. But which one to choose? Does detail impinge on clarity, are size and scale more important than quick readability? You can spend as little as pounds 1.99 and buy a pocket-size Michelin Mini-Atlas, or blow pounds 20 on a plushly-bound hardback AA atlas that is worthy of a place on a library shelf rather than the backseat of a car Between these extremes lies a multitude of map-books.

It certainly makes sense, therefore, to buy a new atlas about once every two years. The AA, as map publishers, employs a team of people whose job is to travel around the country and monitor all alterations, major and minor: new roads, widened carriageways, even different pub names. About 3,000 revisions are made every year to existing AA titles. Michelin, similarly, has a group of cartographers on the move – as have other map publishers. With Britain’s landscape in a constant state of flux, keeping up with change is a demanding task. Write to: High Life, Michael Williams, Executive News Editor, The Independent, 1 Canada Square, London E14 5DL..

There have been a few split skins as temperatures have outpaced our watering efforts. But I am confident that in a week or so I shall have what seed catalogues describe as a “bumper crop”.I still have a niggling worry: my tomatoes may have enjoyed the high life, but are they – at 260ft above the ground – really the highest? I offer this challenge: a chance to sample the first of the crop and a bottle of champagne to wash it down for anyone who can claim to have grown the highest office tomato. Word even reached the Daily Telegraph downstairs on the 11th floor, which published a diary item in its Peterborough column That was when the plants were 3ft high Now they are a healthy 4ft, with plump, ripening trusses. And not a sign of blossom-end rot, leaf roll, verticulum wilt – or any other wilt for that matter.Admittedly, I could have been more diligent. Reporters contemplated an investigation into whether they were really cannabis plants in disguise. (And I never discovered who had festooned them with bananas when I arrived back from holiday.)Meanwhile, the plants grew and grew, succoured by a watering rota organised by the deputy editor and fuelled by regular shots of Tomorite fertiliser. “Unless your trusses have set by 13 July,” the comment page editor fretted, “you might as well give up.” The economics columnist muttered darkly about the air- conditioning and lack of humidity.