Eric Newby

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
by Eric Newby
Published 1 Jan 1957

Epigraph ‘Il faudrait une expédition bien organisée et pourvue de moyens matérials puissants pour tenter l’étude de cette région de haute montagne dont les rares cols sont à plus de 5000 mètres d’altitude.’ L’Hindou Kouch et le Kaboulistan Raymond Furon Preface Mr Eric Newby must not be confused with the other English writer of the same surname. I began reading A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush in the belief that it was the work of his namesake, whom I have long relished. I found something equally delightful but quite different. Mr Eric Newby, I have since learned, is the author of an exciting sea-log, The Last Grain Race, an account of how at the age of eighteen he signed on as an apprentice of the Finnish barque Moshulu, lived in the fo’c’sle as the only Englishman, worked the ship, rounded both capes under sail in all the vicissitudes of the historic and now extinct passage from Australia to the United Kingdom of the grain-carrying windjammers.

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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 Copyright HarperPress An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk This HarperPressedition published 2010 First published by Secker & Warburg 1958 First published in paperback by Arrow 1961 Published by Picador in 1974 in association with William Collins Sons Fiftieth anniversary edition published by Picador 2008 Copyright © Eric Newby 1958 Preface copyright © Evelyn Waugh 1959 Epilogue copyright © Hugh Carless 2008 Eric Newby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush ERIC NEWBY Preface by Evelyn Waugh Epilogue by Hugh Carless Table of Contents Title Page Dedication Epigraph Preface Chapter One Life of a Salesman Chapter Two Death of a Salesman Chapter Three Birth of a Mountain Climber Chapter Four Pera Palace Chapter Five The Dying Nomad Chapter Six Airing in a Closed Carriage Chapter Seven A Little Bit of Protocol Chapter Eight Panjshir Valley Chapter Nine A Walk in the Sun Chapter Ten Finding our Feet Chapter Eleven Western Approaches Chapter Twelve Round 1 Chapter Thirteen Coming Round the Mountain Chapter Fourteen Round 2 Chapter Fifteen Knock-out Chapter Sixteen Over the Top Chapter Seventeen Going Down!

To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Express, the World's Greatest Railroad
by Christian Wolmar
Published 4 Aug 2014

It is, therefore, a few miles shorter, but that is hardly significant; although in a sense the Trans-Siberian is a slight misnomer, since it is 9,000 miles from St Petersburg to Kamchatka, the furthermost point of Siberia in the north-east. In other words, the Trans-Siberian does only two thirds of the job. Nevertheless, it is an impressive one. The author of The Big Red Train Ride, the late Eric Newby, summed it up best: ‘There is no railway journey of comparable length anywhere in the world. The Trans-Siberian is the big train ride. All the rest are peanuts.’ A note on dates. Russia used the Julian calendar until just after the October Revolution (which was actually in November in the Gregorian calendar) and changed to the Gregorian on Wednesday, 31 January 1918, which, consequently, was followed by Thursday, 14 February 1918, thus dropping thirteen days from the calendar.

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Duff also reportedly said that the tramway could be horse-drawn, using some of the four million horses that supposedly roamed around western Siberia. Despite the fact that even the ever-inventive Victorians would have spotted the impractical nature of the idea, numerous historians have intimated that this was a serious suggestion. Sadly it was probably just a joke born of a casual remark. In any case, Chevkin, portrayed aptly by Eric Newby as ‘a man noted for his irascibility and a masterly obstructionist to boot’1 – a description that could be ascribed to many of his successors in government who thwarted attempts to modernize Russia – was unimpressed with the idea and showed Duff the door, saying that the scheme ‘did not seem realizable because of the climatic conditions’.2 Duff tried again three years later to no avail.

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There were endless tables providing a host of statistics, such as the weight of goods (in puds, the Russian measure which is around 36 lb) imported into Vladivostok and Nikolaevsk, the number of horses, cattle, sheep and other farm animals in the various districts around Chita, and the acreage sown in each of the districts around Tyumen, precisely the kind of thing Eric Newby in his book The Big Red Train Ride describes having to bear on his numerous tours of Soviet collective farms. It was born precisely of the same desperate drive rooted in the Russian soul to demonstrate that whatever the Europeans could do, they could do just as well or even better. Given the length and occasional tedium of the journey, presumably the guide must have been a useful soporific when passengers retired for the night and found sleep troublesome as they were rocked by the bumpy track.

London Under
by Peter Ackroyd
Published 1 Nov 2011

Mary by the bourne or brook. The Tyburn then crosses Green Park, flows past Buckingham Palace, and runs through Victoria and Pimlico into the Thames by Vauxhall Bridge. This was until recent times an area of marsh and swamp, so that the waters of the Tyburn in the vicinity were not much used. In A Traveller’s Life (1982) Eric Newby recounts how he came upon the stream in 1963 and recalls that “the bottom of the Tyburn was littered with some bizarre sorts of jetsam which included that morning a fine pair of unmounted antlers, a folio Bible in the Welsh language, half a pram and an old bicycle.” Rivers seem to attract unwanted and dilapidated things; consigned to the water, they can be made to disappear.

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The sewer turned and twisted when suddenly, at a quarter to midday, they realised that the tide had come in to a depth of 2½ feet. He and his companions were in fear for their lives and “holding our Lamps aloft, dashed up the Sewer, which we had to get up one half before out of danger. The air was close, and made us faint. However we got safe to Holborn Bridge.…” In A Traveller’s Life Eric Newby reflected on a journey within the Tyburn sewer in the early 1960s. He was told to be alert to the presence of acetylene, petrol, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with “a nice smell of almonds, the faintest suspicion of which sent any gang of sewermen” straight back to the surface at a very fast pace.

An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
by Jason Elliot
Published 1 Aug 2011

I tried to imagine the men around us shaven and under fluorescent lights, equipped them mentally with copies of the Evening Standard, and found nothing more sinister in them than the characters who sit opposite you on the London Underground. But for the most part the European eye is unaccustomed to such intensity and readily finds something intimidating in it: Eric Newby’s adventures in the Panjshīr valley and Nuristan are littered with references to ‘villanous-looking’, ‘murderous-looking’ and ‘mad-looking’ individuals, frequently ‘smelly’, ‘verminous’ and ‘brute’, with ‘an air of being able to commit the most atrocious crimes and then sit down to a hearty meal’.

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I raised mine too and uttered the customary prayer, little guessing that the most terrifying portion of the journey was about to begin. Six This evening was like some golden age of human happiness, attained sometimes by children, more rarely by grown-ups, and it communicated its magic in some degree to all of us. Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush WE HAD NOT YET REACHED the edge of the town before the first floundering. A government fighter flagged down the truck just as we crossed the river, and insisted on inspecting the cargo. Under the conditions of the time it was the nature of such interruptions to be drawn out and resolved not so much by a logical solution, but by a protracted fraying of tempers and an eventual consensus of pointlessness.

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Like Enver Pasha he was killed by enemy bullets, having returned under promise of immunity to Kabul to face his successors – and the manner of his death passed into legend as alive today as ever; like Enver he is remembered differently on different sides. Wilfred Thesiger worked for T. The great explorer used to escape from the heat of the Iraqi summers by taking long rambles in the Hindu Kush, where his meeting with Eric Newby and Hugh Carless produced one of the funniest endings in travel literature.* U was hopeless; but V brought to mind another of the most intriguing and tragic figures of the Great Game, the raw details of whose story I tried to remember between violent lurches, each of which threatened to tip us unceremoniously into the chasm below.

In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan
by Seth G. Jones
Published 12 Apr 2009

They then continue southwest through Pakistan into Afghanistan, where they eventually descend into a series of minor ranges in western Afghanistan. Historically, the high passes of the Hindu Kush have been of great military significance, providing access to the northern plains of India for such conquerors as Alexander, as well as invaders such as Genghis Khan, Timur, and Babur. And they inspired the British travel writer Eric Newby, who wrote, during his trek through the Hindu Kush, “Here on the Arayu, one of the lonely places of the earth with all the winds of Asia droning over it, where the mountains seemed like the bones of the world breaking through, I had the sensation of emerging from a country that would continue to exist more or less unchanged whatever disasters overtook the rest of mankind.”5 Afghanistan was one of the most difficult campaigns that Alexander the Great ever fought.

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Rolfe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1946), pp. 25–29. 3. Rufus, History of Alexander, book 2, vol. 6, p. 29. 4. Rufus, History of Alexander, book 2, vol. 7, p. 147. Also see, for example, Lewis V. Cummings, Alexander the Great (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1940), pp. 280–81. 5. Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (London: Martin Secker, 1958), p. 243. 6. See, for example, Frank L. Holt, Into the Land of Bones: Alexander the Great in Afghanistan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005). 7. Marco Polo, The Travels of Marco Polo, translated by Ronald Latham (New York: Penguin Books, 1958), p. 77. 8.

Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite
by Carne Ross
Published 25 Apr 2007

It was perhaps appropriate that this should be my last diplomatic posting, a brief sojourn from my permanent post in New York. As a teenager I had stuck a collection of postcards to the wall by my bed. One, a well-known photograph, showed a mujahideen fighter kneeling on a prayer mat in the Afghan mountains, his hands raised in supplication to Allah, a Kalashnikov by his side. Eric Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush had been one of my favourite books; Ahmed Shah Masood’s romantic struggle against the helicopter gunships and bombers of the Soviet Union my favourite war. I had lobbied hard to be posted to Kabul when Britain reopened its embassy after the Taliban fell. My qualifications were scant: that I had “done” Afghanistan on the UN Security Council, for instance by negotiating the Security Council mandate for the International Security Assistance Force which now helped police Kabul.

The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart
Published 1 Jan 2004

He left in the middle of winter, and that is a very bad time to travel along the central route. Part One Herat ... The policeman at the cross-roads with a whistling fit to scare the Chicago underworld —Robert Byron, The Road to Oxiana, 1933 Herat ... The police directing a thin trickle of automobiles with whistles and ill-tempered gestures like referees —Eric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, 1952 Herat ... A small lonely policeman in the center of a vast deserted square, directing two donkeys and a bicycle with a majesty and ferocity more appropriate to the Champs Elysées —Peter Levi, The Light Garden of the Angel King, 1970 CHICAGO AND PARIS On my last morning in Herat, I was reluctant to get out of bed.

Cyclopedia
by William Fotheringham
Published 22 Sep 2011

BOOKS—TRAVEL French Revolutions, Tim Moore A cycling novice takes on a bonkers task: riding around France, loosely based on the 2000 Tour route. Moore has no inhibitions about his own failings and, unlike others who use the “I” word to destruction, he gets away with it because his sense of humor never flags. Probably the best constructed ending among all the fine tomes listed here. Round Ireland in Low Gear, Eric Newby Pretty eccentric tale, as the travel-writing great sets off in the depths of winter with wife Wanda to contend with Irish weather, Irish signposts, and their shared lack of cycling experience. Round the World on a Wheel, John Foster-Fraser Kipling or Baden Powell should have written this account of one of the first around-the-world trips.

Arabian Sands
by Wilfred Thesiger
Published 15 Sep 1959

They presented themselves either as libraries of historic allusion or as figures of fun. Their books were filled with comic dialogue, ornate descriptions and exotic incidents typically involving public-school maharajahs, colourful crowded bus rides and reveries on ancient monuments. One of the leading exponents of the new style was Eric Newby, whose book A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush was published in the same year as Arabian Sands. Newby was a decorated Special Forces veteran, who had escaped from a prisoner of war camp, spent eighteen months doing backbreaking work while hiding on an Apennine farm, and had just attempted a very difficult mountain ascent when he met Thesiger in Afghanistan in 1956.

Lonely Planet Florence & Tuscany
by Lonely Planet , Virginia Maxwell and Nicola Williams
Published 1 Dec 2013

The following writers did just that, some establishing wildly successful literary franchises in the process. » Dario Castagno (Too Much Tuscan Sun; A Day in Tuscany; Too Much Tuscan Wine; 2004–2009) » Mark Gordon Smith (Tuscan Echoes; Tuscan Light: Memories of Italy; 2003–2007) » Sam Hilt (Turning Tuscan: A Step-By-Step Guide to Going Native; 2012) » David Leavitt & Mark Mitchell (In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany; 2002, updated 2011) » Ferenc Máté (The Hills of Tuscany; A Vineyard in Tuscany: A Wine-Lover’s Dream; The Wisdom of Tuscany; 1999–2009) » Frances Mayes (Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy; Bella Tuscany; In Tuscany; Every Day in Tuscany; 1996–2010) » Don McPherson (Ah! Tuscany: The Enlightenment of an Expatriate; 2006) » Eric Newby (A Small Place in Italy; 1994) The 19th Century Onwards After its stellar start during the Renaissance, Tuscany took a literary break in the 17th and 18th centuries. It wasn’t until the 19th century that the scene started to regain some momentum. Giosue Carducci (1835–1907) was one of the key figures of 19th- century Tuscan literature.

Florence & Tuscany
by Lonely Planet

The following writers did just that, some establishing wildly successful literary franchises in the process. » Dario Castagno ( Too Much Tuscan Sun; A Day in Tuscany; Too Much Tuscan Wine; 2004–2009) » Mark Gordon Smith ( Tuscan Echoes; Tuscan Light: Memories of Italy; 2003–2007) » Ferenc Máté ( The Hills of Tuscany; A Vineyard in Tuscany: A Wine-Lover’s Dream; The Wisdom of Tuscany; 1999–2009) » Frances Mayes ( Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy; Bella Tuscany; In Tuscany; Every Day in Tuscany; 1996–2010) » Don McPherson ( Ah! Tuscany: The Enlightenment of an Expatriate; 2006) » Eric Newby ( A Small Place in Italy; 1994) Through Foreign Eyes The trend of setting English-language novels in Tuscany kicked off during the era of the Grand Tour, when wealthy young men from Britain and Northern Europe travelled around Europe to view the cultural legacies of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, completing their liberal educations and being introduced to polite society in the process.

Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar
by Paul Theroux
Published 9 Sep 2008

After 1948, Thesiger did not return to Rub’ al Khali, the Empty Quarter of Arabia. Burton did not mount another expedition to Utah, or to substantiate the source of the Nile – at my age he was living in Trieste, immersed in erotica. Darwin never went to sea again. Neither did Joseph Conrad, who ended up hating the prospect of seafaring. Eric Newby went down the Ganges once, Jonathan Raban down the Mississippi once, and Jan Morris climbed Everest once. Robert Byron did not take the road to Oxiana again, Cherry-Garrard made only one trip to Antarctica, Chatwin never returned to Patagonia, nor did Doughty go back to Arabia Deserta, nor Wallace to the Malay Archipelago, nor Waterton to the Amazon, nor Trollope to the West Indies, nor Edward Lear to Corsica, nor Stevenson to the Cévennes, nor Chekhov to Sakhalin, nor Gide to the Congo, nor Canetti to Marrakesh, nor Jack London to the Solomon Islands, nor Mark Twain to Hawaii.

Rick Steves Florence & Tuscany 2017
by Rick Steves
Published 8 Nov 2016

The man who invented the term “Renaissance” offers anecdote-filled biographies of his era’s greatest artists, some of whom he knew personally. The Prince (Niccolò Machiavelli, 1532). The original “how-to” for gaining and maintaining political power, still chillingly relevant after 500 years. A Small Place in Italy (Eric Newby, 1994). A young American couple tries to renovate a Tuscan farmhouse in the late 1960s. The Stones of Florence (Mary McCarthy, 1956). McCarthy applies wit and keen observation to produce a quirky, impressionistic investigation of Florence and its history. A Tuscan Childhood (Kinta Beevor, 1993).

The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
by David Abulafia
Published 4 May 2011

Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean (London, 2010) looks at Smyrna, Alexandria and Beirut, in the era of ethnic and religious coexistence. Lively travel accounts of the whole Mediterranean have been provided by the always readable Paul Theroux, The Pillars of Hercules: a Grand Tour of the Mediterranean (London, 1995), by Eric Newby, On the Shores of the Mediterranean (London, 1984), and by Robert Fox, The Inner Sea: the Mediterranean and its People (London, 1991). Lastly, no one with affection for the Mediterranean can ignore Elizabeth David, A Book of Mediterranean Food (London, 1950) and more recent accounts of Mediterranean cuisine such as Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean Cookery (London, 1987).

The Rough Guide to Ireland
by Clements, Paul
Published 2 Jun 2015

An extended crawl around the McCarthy’s bars of Ireland provides occasion for insight and plenty of irresistible humour. Patrick McKay A Dictionary of Ulster Place-Names. Not just a cornucopia of etymological derivations but a veritable treasure-trove of information about almost every single place in the province of Ulster. Eric Newby Round Ireland in Low Gear. Enjoyable account by the doyen of travel writers of a leisurely cycle trip around the country. Tim Robinson Connemara: Listening to the Wind. Fascinating story of the Roundstone area around the author’s home, ranging over everything from geology to folklore, written in a deceptively plain, easy style.

The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans
by David Abulafia
Published 2 Oct 2019

On the other hand, Spencer Bay lay much closer to the sources of grain, and using sailing vessels, which comfortably negotiated the winds and currents of the bay, avoided the nuisance of having to hump the grain a hundred miles or so to Adelaide for collection by steamers. Loading their grain there, they then headed south of New Zealand towards Cape Horn, which was generally much more manageable when travelling eastwards out of the Pacific than in the other direction: Eric Newby reported rain and snow as he rounded the cape aboard Erikson’s fast windjammer the Moshulu in 1939, but he also says that ‘the sea was not rough but there was a tremendous see-saw motion of the water’, and it was ‘bitterly cold’. After that the windjammers wended their way along a twisting route north through the Atlantic to Falmouth in Cornwall or Cobh (Queenstown) in southern Ireland.