As a fugitive from a POW camp in Northern Italy in 1943, Eric Newby spent three months hiding out in the forests and mountains south of the river Po. This story recounts his experiences and the invaluable aid given by the local people, especially the woman who became his life-long love.
This gets 3 stars for dumb bravado and goodwill. In their sixties, Newby and his wife return for several bike trips across Ireland. It's not enough that Newby rides a mountain bike packed with books clocking in at nearly 100 pounds, but they also do it despite gale force winds in Irish winter. I'...
Eric Newby and his equally intrepid wife, Wanda, start off at Naples to explore the shores of the Mediterranean over the course of about a year, moving in a clockwise direction. This is an author who does meticulous research and keeps copious notes so his tales of exploration are dense with infor...
Really the prequel to Under the Tuscan Sun, written by a British man who is a travel writer in London, about his experiences in remote Tuscany in the late 60's. He was an escapee during WWII and wanted to return to the people who hid him, and the part of Italy he came to cherish. He and his wif...
Eric Newby's life of travel began at a young age. Early journeys with his mother aroused his hunger for wider horizons. Happily for us he indulged his interest, from a slosh through the London sewers to bicycling in Italy, from a youthful tour on a great grain ship to an encounter with that wilde...
'Eric Newby still holds the laurels as the country's wittiest travel writer . . . "A Merry Dance Around the World" is a collection of all the master's best traveller's tales extracted from a lifetime's travel writing. It is an astonishing catalogue of disasters and misunderstandings, but it had m...
As always Badar Khan contrived to remain in his passive role, looking after the horses which were all extremely frisky, possibly due to some aphrodisiac quality possessed by the root absinthium on which they continued to gorge themselves. He was also in charge of a sheep the three of them had bou...
It was New Year’s Eve 1964. At 11.30 p.m., having entrusted a two-kilo tin of the finest procurable caviar to the engine driver who stuck it on the front of his steam locomotive in order to keep it cool, I boarded the Krasnaya Strela (the Red Arrow), and after disposing of my baggage took a seat ...
‘I expect a rough go,’ he wrote, and I knew him to be tough, ‘with as many as a dozen portages a day.’ We flew to a place called Timmins with a mountain of gear. Gold was struck there in 1907. In 1964 it became a boom town for the second time when the Texas Sulphur Company made a major ore strike...
For hours and sometimes days I waited with my feet sinking deeper and deeper into the carpet for Buyers who had just gone on holiday, were just going, were in London, Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Rome, Zurich or the ladies’ powder room; had a cold, had been dismissed or had not yet been appointed; w...