Departures and Arrivals [Lingua Inglese] - Rilegato

Eric Newby was born in London in 1919 and educated at St Paul’s School. During the Second World War he served in the Black Watch and Special Boat Section, and was a prisoner of war from 1942-5. For many years he was travel editor of the Observer. He is the author of many travel books, including What the Traveller Saw and A Small Place in Italy.

Highly observant, with a keen sense of the incongruous, Eric Newby is always entertaining in this recollection of highlights from an eventful life. He transports the reader around the world, from his earliest childhood adventures among the shops, streets and eccentrics of darkest Barnes, to an elephant fair in India; from the faded glamour of days and nights on the Orient Express, to the flies, heat, grandeur and chilled beer of the Australian outback (where a can of beer every twenty miles is the norm, rising to one every five miles in extreme conditions, if supplies allow).

Whether he is putting heart and soul into building the perfect grotto in his Devon garden together with his wife Wanda and Mr Perring the stonemason, rambling around a semi-abandonded and despoiled Calabria, attempting to escape from the tourist trail in China or wrestling with the logistics baby-rearing, both existing admirers and new readers will enjoy the exuberance and humour that distinguishes Newby’s best work.

As Evelyn Waugh put it: “Fall to and enjoy this characteristic artefact.”