A Merry Dance Around the World

by Eric Newby

'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 me laughing so uncontrollably my wife eventually forbade me from reading it in public' "Sunday Times"

'In the increasingly populous realm of travel writing, Eric Newby has acquired Homeric status . . . The extract from "Love and War in the Apennines," arguably one of the best travel books ever written, shows Eric Newby at his most scintillating, and the chapter from "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" includes the most luminous moment in modern travelling history' "Daily Telegraph"

'Whatever Eric Newby writes I read with uncritical pleasure. The Newby travels are classics of their time' "Financial Times"

'Keeping up with Eric Newby, every breathless puff and pant of it, is worth it all the way. His vitality, which was always more than most people's, gets bigger and his writing richer and funnier' " Observer"

'Newby is an incomparable, shrewd and witty travel writer . . . Immensely enjoyable' John Mortimer, "Mail on Sunday"

'Newby has quite rightly established himself as one of the sharpest, funniest and most boisterously entertaining of all travel writers' " Sunday Telegraph"

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction

Paperback

First published October 11, 1996

About the author

George Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006) was an English author of travel literature.

Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is actually parts of other books collected later in Newby’s life. He died in 2006. I’d previously read his Slowly Down the Ganges and Round Ireland in Low Gear—years ago and remember liking them. This collection strikes me as very uneven, even dull at times. I’d have thought his introduction and early life would have been more interesting. It only showed a kid who today might be given drugs to suppress hyperactivity and lack of focus. I assume those very qualities indicate something about his future wandering ways and inability to stick with any one career. Newby led a charmed life in spite of himself.

My favorite chapters dealt with his training on a Finnish commercial sailing ship before those ships disappeared, a chapter about his time in the family fashion business after WWII and his bicycle trip around Ireland with his wife when they were in their sixties. Two of those three chapters have little to do with his career in travel writing. Reading this book might help you pick and choose further reading.

[Ron Hardwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amusing anthology of bits and pieces from an extraordinary life, from Mr Newby's time as a fashion buyer in his father's firm, to his capture, internment, escape and recapture in Italy in World War II, including his romance with a Slovenian woman Wanda, who subsequently became his wife. Finally, extracts from his travel adventures, ranging from bicycling in Ireland, sailing down the Ganges and buying a ruined cottage in the Apennines as a holiday home. Great fun.

[Chris Wilby · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before internet in remote areas Eric takes us on various trips where more is learnt of the people and his experiences.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

Newby is often funny, and maybe the first of the travel writers to make his incompetence and/or confusion the point of his writing, at least in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, which I would like to reread someday. This particular volume suffers because it excerpts numerous books, so once you get into something, it disappears. It also suffers because you want the later writings to be more like the early ones. His stories up to A Short Walk are great and very personal, especially the long description of his time as a POW and attempted escapee during WWII. However, after A Short Walk, he seems to have become an established travel writer, and so lards his personal stories with lots of travel guide details which aren't all that exciting, and lots of And Then We, also less exciting. And then there's the fact that he eschews any punctuation but comma and period. In one sentence on page 218, there are 19 commas, or is it twenty, leading to confusion, or is it boredom, or is it something worse? He's still often funny. But not often enough here.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely book, great for my commute. A remarkable vista of the 20th century.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Newby is very engaging - escapism through his adventures