If you're like me, you get endless brochures from alumni organizations (even those from schools you never attended) advertising tours or cruises led by a famous and eager-to-talk professor who's a specialist in the destination. They make your mouth water -- until you spot the price. These university fund-raisers (another of their functions) routinely cost $900 and even $1,000 per person per day.

So you'll want to know about Martin Randall, the source of intensely intellectual tours for well-read people, costing as little as $400 a day per person -- still high but at least sensible. London-based Martin Randall Travel (tel. 011-44-20-8742-3355; www.martinrandall.com) survives as virtually the sole source of moderately priced tours that can be characterized as genuinely intellectual. Each of its programs departs with a notable expert on board who delivers daily lectures and commentary based on hard-won expertise.

Martin Randall is a real person, not an invented figurehead for the sake of marketing, and he takes an active role in designing and shaping each of dozens of educational itineraries, going as far as to help select writers, academics, curators, and lecturers based on not only their smarts in arts, architecture, and history, but also their abilities to engage a group. Experts range from college educators to authors to members of the British Parliament, and themes span history, the arts, and even horticulture.

Randall, who came to travel by way of an education at London's ultra-prestigious Courtauld Institute for Art History, is nothing if not timely in his selection of experts -- the guest lecturer for the company's Crimean War-themed excursion through Ukraine, to be conducted in September, is Patrick Mercer, an Oxford-educated historian and British MP who in early March made headlines and lost his post in Parliament for speaking about racism in the British military.

Randall's informational website sets the tone for his briskly intelligent, upmarket tours: "Our clients are grown ups," it states with British primness. "We structure our arrangements to allow you to retain some responsibility for yourselves and avoid excessive mollycoddling."

Most of Martin Randall's European and North African tours depart from London, including airfare to and from there. If you're paying in pounds, the rates are not bare-bones but certainly do-able -- £200 to £300 a day is the norm, and each day, including the first and last days of the tour, is programmed with activities. Of course, the unfavorable exchange rate from the pound to the dollar currently means that you'll be paying about $400 a day. But, of course, that figure gets you most meals, four-star hotels, many flights (except the ones from America), ground transportation, tips, tickets, and unparalleled access to experts and art.

In the case of the Michelangelo tour of Florence and Rome, the extras include lectures by an architecture historian from the University of London and a private tour of the Sistine Chapel. The Wellington in the Peninsula tour of Spain is conducted by an author of a three-volume work about the British military genius. And the Stained Glass tour of French churches is hosted by a woman who obtained her doctorate in the Gothic architecture of northern Burgundy.

No other company currently provides such an erudite service for such a reasonable daily price. If you know of one, I'd love to be advised -- and will rush to post its name on this blog.

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