When Ian Wright, a Canadian-born cartophile, began blogging about his favourite maps, he found himself with a surprise viral hit. Since he launched his website Brilliant Maps in 2014, it has been viewed by nearly 15m people from 241 countries and territories — “impressive, considering the UN has only 193 member states”, he says, with the type of nerdy precision you might expect.

It was moving to London in 2010 and exploring the capital that sparked his fascination with the stories maps tell us about ourselves. In 2015, Wright became the first person to walk all of the London Tube map including the overland lines and the DLR. In total, he walked 632.45 miles, further than Land’s End to John o’ Groats.

Now, 100 of