Книги, похожие на «Eric Newby, A Traveller’s Life»

An illustrated ebook documenting the hugely varied and always entertaining career of one of Britain’s best-loved travel writers.Born in London in 1919, Eric Newby was educated at St Paul’s School. He began his travelling career in a perambulator commuting between Hammersmith Bridge and such seaside resorts as Frinton. In 1938 he persuaded his father to have him apprenticed to the four-masted Finnish barque Moshulu and, with camera in tow, sailed in the last Grain Race from Australia to Europe by way of Cape Horn – the beginning of a lifelong passion for both travel and photography.During the war Newby served in the Black Watch and the Special Boat Service and was awarded the Military Cross. It was as a prisoner of war in Italy that he first met Wanda, his beloved wife and travelling companion of many years. Following the War he spent ten years as a commercial traveller and in a London couture house before resuming his travelling career when he decided to take A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.Whatever else he was doing, he has always travelled on a grand scale, whether under his own steam or as Travel Editor of the Observer. Over the years he has mined the richly comic seam of his varied experiences to produce many popular travel classics, such as Slowly Down the Ganges, Love and War in the Apennines, A Traveller’s Life, A Small Place in Italy and A Merry Dance Around the World. In all of his adventures his camera has never been far from his side, and the 250 photographs reproduced in this volume represent some of his finest work. Newby’s accompanying recollections are full of his trademark self-deprecating humour and highly observant sense of the incongruous.

With his trademark charm and sharp wit, Newby leaves no stone unturned in his quest for wonderfully detailed and quirky knowledge to share with his reader. Insightful, hilarious and sheer fun, this is an adventure not to be missed, by Britain's best-loved travel guide, and father of the genre.'Why don't you start in Naples and go clockwise round the Mediterranean instead of dashing off in all directions like a lunatic?' Fortunately, Eric Newby followed his wife Wanda's advice, and so begins the wonderfully madcap adventure, ‘On the Shores of the Mediterranean’.Beginning during the Newbys' wine harvest in Tuscany, the adventurous but disaster-prone pair follow a path using every form of transportation conceivable (public bus, taxi, foot, bike, boat), from Naples to Venice, along the Adriatic to Greece, Turkey, Jerusalem and North Africa, from sipping wildly extravagant cocktails in San Marco to being cordially invited to Libya by Colonel Gaddafi.

This book is a lush and beautiful memoir of a very special house and a superb recreation of a bygone era.In 1967, veteran travel writer Eric Newby and his heroic wife Wanda fulfiled their dream of a return to life in the Italian hills where they first met during World War II. But this fulfilment would not come easy. The dream materialised in the form of I Castagni ('The Chestnuts'), a small, decrepit farmhouse with no roof, an abandoned septic tank and its own indigenous wildlife reluctant to give up their home. But in the foothills of the Apuan Alps on the border of Liguria and Northern Tuscany, this ramshackle house would soon become a hub of love, friendship and activity.Whether recounting dangerous expeditions through Afghanistan or everyday life in a country house, Newby's talent shines through as one of the foremost writers of the comic travel genre. Full of Newby's sharp wit and good humour, ‘A Small Place’ in Italy returns, twenty years later, to the life of Newby's much-cherished classic, Love and War in the Apennines. It lovingly recounts the quickly disappearing lifestyle of the idiosyncratic locals, and the enduring friendships they forge, whether sharing in growing their first wine harvest as novices or frying poisonous mushrooms for a feast.

Hailed as Newby's 'masterpiece', ‘Love and War in the Apennines’ is the gripping real-life story of Newby's imprisonment and escape from an Italian prison camp during World War II.After the Italian Armistice of 1943, Eric Newby escaped from the prison camp in which he'd been held for a year. He evaded the German army by hiding in the caves and forests of Fontanellato, in Italy's Po Valley. Against this picturesque backdrop, he was sheltered for three months by an informal network of Italian peasants, who fed, supported and nursed him, before his eventual recapture.‘Love and War in the Apennines’ is Newby's tribute to the selfless and courageous people who were to be his saviours and companions during this troubled time and of their bleak and unchanging way of life. Of the cast of idiosyncratic characters, most notable was the beautiful local girl on a bike who would teach him the language, and eventually help him escape; two years later they were married and would spend the rest of their lives as co-adventurers. Part travelogue, part escape story and part romance, this is a mesmerising account of wisdom, courage, humour and adventure, and tells the story of the early life of a man who would become one of Britain's best-loved literary adventurers.

This outstanding collection of pieces, illustrated with his own superb photographs, is a unique record of Newby’s travels all over the globe – and a lasting tribute to lost and fading worlds.One of the funniest and most entertaining of all travel writers, Eric Newby has been wandering the by-ways of the world for over half a century.Admired for his exceptional powers of observation, Newby’s genius is also to capture the unexpected, the curious and the absurd on camera.Since his very first journey in 1938, Newby’s quest for the unknown and the unusual has been insatiable. Whether on a dangerous canoe trip down the Wakwayowkastic River, with the pastoral people in the mountainous north of Spain, or visiting the exotic archipelago of Fiji, nothing escapes his eye for unlikely or amusing detail.A rare combination of travel writing and photography, What the Traveller Saw is an exhilarating record of Newby’s humourous adventures over the years.