A Traveller's Life (34 page)

The letters from Evelyn Waugh are reproduced by permission of A. D. Peters and Co. Ltd.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Robin Baird-Smith and Gill Gibbins of Collins for their advice and help. Also Ann Etherington for her accurate and unbelievably rapid typing of the manuscript not once but several times before it was reduced to publishable proportions.

ERIC NEWBY
was born in London in 1919 and was educated at St Paul's School. In 1938, he joined the four-masted Finnish barque
Moshulu
as an apprentice and sailed in the last Grain Race from Australia to Europe, by way of Cape Horn. During World War II, he served in the Black Watch and the Special Boat Section. In 1942, he was captured and remained a prisoner-of-war until 1945. He subsequently married the girl who helped him escape, and for the next fifty years, his wife Wanda was at his side on many adventures. After the war, his world expanded still further – into the fashion business and book publishing. Whatever else he was doing, Newby always travelled on a grand scale, either under his own steam or as the Travel Editor for the
Observer
. He was made a CBE in 1994 and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers in 2001. Eric Newby died in 2006.

From the reviews of A
Traveller's Life
:

‘A
Traveller's Life
offers a high-spirited collection of memories, packed with good things, from a man who can make a schoolboy holiday in Swanage as colourful as a walk in the Hindu Kush'

Observer

‘Eric Newby writes as lightly as he travels. A
Traveller's Life
is a tonic and a pleasure'

WILLIAM TREVOR,
Guardian

‘The thing that sets Eric Newby quite apart from other literate travellers is his gusto. Where others flutter on impressionistic wings, tread self-consciously across unpeopled wastes, or muse lyrically and sometimes disproportionately about the past, Newby barges into everything with relish and mockery in the very opposite of the grand manner … Everything Eric Newby has written is a joy. This compendium is a treat'

GEOFFREY MOORHOUSE,
The Times

‘This is a collection of jewelled vignettes: part travel, part life. A feast … One of the few great travel writers who makes you want
to follow in his footsteps. As he travels on, Newby never loses this childhood freshness of vision, his essential innocence as a traveller. Perhaps this is his greatest gift'

TLS

‘Whatever his quest may be, he allows us to accompany him vicariously on it … and his book is a delight to read'

AUBERON WAUGH

‘Appealing autobiography by ex-travel editor who can find adventure in a pram trip or a London sewer'

Sunday Telegraph

By the same author

The Last Grain Race

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush

Something Wholesale

Slowly Down the Ganges

Grain Race: Pictures of Life Before the Mast in a Windjammer

Love and War in the Apennines

The Mitchell Beazley World Atlas of Exploration

Great Ascents: A Narrative History of Mountaineering

The Big Red Train Ride

On the Shores of the Mediterranean

A Book of Travellers' Tales
(ed.)

Round Ireland in Low Gear

What the Traveller Saw

A Small Place in Italy

A Merry Dance Around the World: The Best of Eric Newby

Learning the Ropes: An Apprentice in the

Last of the Windjammers

Departures and Arrivals