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A Traveller's Life
A chronicle of travels, some homely some exotic, from the man who can make a schoolboy holiday in Swanage as colourful as a walk in the Hindu Kush.
Eric Newby's life of travel began in 1919, on pram-ride adventures with his mother into the dark streets of Barnes and the chaotic jungles of Harrods, and progressed to solo, school-bound adventures around the slums of darkest Hammersmith. His interest piqued, Newby's wanderlust snowballed, and his adventures multiplied, as he navigated the London sewer system, bicycled to Italy and meandered the wilds of New York's Broadway. Whether travelling abroad as a high-fashion buyer for a British department store or for pure adventure as a travel writer, even when reluctantly participating in a tiger shoot in India, Newby chronicles his adventures with verve, humour and infectious enthusiasm.
After nine years as the travel editor for the Observer, Newby reluctantly gave up the post, eschewing the new form of human-as-freight travel. However, this change was certainly no pity for his readers, as the latter-day Newby continued on his unwavering quest for fascinating detail and adventure wherever he roamed, whether on two feet or two wheels. ‘A Traveller's Life’ chronicles the incredible adventures of one of the best-loved tour guides in the history of travel writing.
Eric Newby's life of travel began in 1919, on pram-ride adventures with his mother into the dark streets of Barnes and the chaotic jungles of Harrods, and progressed to solo, school-bound adventures around the slums of darkest Hammersmith. His interest piqued, Newby's wanderlust snowballed, and his adventures multiplied, as he navigated the London sewer system, bicycled to Italy and meandered the wilds of New York's Broadway. Whether travelling abroad as a high-fashion buyer for a British department store or for pure adventure as a travel writer, even when reluctantly participating in a tiger shoot in India, Newby chronicles his adventures with verve, humour and infectious enthusiasm.
After nine years as the travel editor for the Observer, Newby reluctantly gave up the post, eschewing the new form of human-as-freight travel. However, this change was certainly no pity for his readers, as the latter-day Newby continued on his unwavering quest for fascinating detail and adventure wherever he roamed, whether on two feet or two wheels. ‘A Traveller's Life’ chronicles the incredible adventures of one of the best-loved tour guides in the history of travel writing.
302 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
21 people are currently reading
147 people want to read
About the author
Eric Newby
42 books172 followersGeorge 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
October 30, 2019
Published in 1982, this book collects chapters which cover a lifetime of travel and experiences, from Newby's early childhood to his leaving his job at The Observer as Travel Editor, in 1973.
For me the stories are quite a mixture, and a bit hit and miss. However the hits are classic Newby - well composed and often hilarious, and they outweigh the misses, which generally involved topics or people with which I was unfamiliar and to be honest not particularly interested it. Again, I would stress that those stories were a minority.
While Newby references his other books, he avoids stories directly from them, but works in adjacency - for example in India, just before his Slowly Down the Ganges journey he is invited on a shoot with two Indian princes - nephews of the Nizam of Hyderabad, so he tells this story and not his Ganges journey. His chapters are all arranged chronically, and labelled by year, and almost read like a list of all the positions of employment, and journey he had been on (including being a prisoner of war in Germany in WW2).
There is also much about Newby's time in the fashion industry. I knew he was involved in the family business, but hadn't realised he left that fairly early in his career to work for fashion giant John Lewis Partnership.
Overall, I would have to say this ranks slightly below his other short story collection Departures and Arrivals, although they both get three stars.
For me the stories are quite a mixture, and a bit hit and miss. However the hits are classic Newby - well composed and often hilarious, and they outweigh the misses, which generally involved topics or people with which I was unfamiliar and to be honest not particularly interested it. Again, I would stress that those stories were a minority.
While Newby references his other books, he avoids stories directly from them, but works in adjacency - for example in India, just before his Slowly Down the Ganges journey he is invited on a shoot with two Indian princes - nephews of the Nizam of Hyderabad, so he tells this story and not his Ganges journey. His chapters are all arranged chronically, and labelled by year, and almost read like a list of all the positions of employment, and journey he had been on (including being a prisoner of war in Germany in WW2).
There is also much about Newby's time in the fashion industry. I knew he was involved in the family business, but hadn't realised he left that fairly early in his career to work for fashion giant John Lewis Partnership.
Overall, I would have to say this ranks slightly below his other short story collection Departures and Arrivals, although they both get three stars.
April 3, 2020
(FROM MY BLOG) I first discovered Eric Newby in 2011, when I read his exciting, and often hilarious, climbing adventure, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. After ten years as a women's dress buyer for a London fashion house, he telegraphed a diplomat friend in Brazil, "CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?" And leaving the world of London fashion, he set out to climb the allegedly unclimbable, 19,000-foot Mir Samir in Afghanistan. He had absolutely no climbing experience. The pair came within 900 feet of succeeding.
Who was this guy, I wondered?
I later read another of his books, The Last Grain Race, in which he describes how, as the recent graduate of a tony London "public" (prep) school, he signed on as an apprentice sailor on a Finnish sailing vessel carrying grain from Australia to Britain. His first day, while still dressed in street clothes, he was ordered to climb the rigging to the top of the mast.
Again I wondered, who was this guy?
I have a better picture of the lad now, after reading his 1982 collection of reflections, A Traveller's Life. In 35 chapters, he discusses and reflects on the travels of his active life. But he explains, in an Introduction, that he broadly defines "travels" to include any experience outside his home -- beginning with his birth, moving along to his boyhood explorations with his mother of Harrod's department store, and his experiences on his own as a school boy.
To anyone looking for a more traditional travel book, these early experiences might seem frustrating. To me, they are the best part of the book, giving a first-hand picture of life in Britain, from a schoolboy's point of view, in the 1920s and 1930s.
Newby was born, in 1919, and reared in Barnes, a district in west London, bordering the south bank of the Thames. Immediately to the north, on the other side of the river, is Hammersmith, which in turn is bordered on its north by Kensington. At the time Newby was a child, Barnes was what he describes as a middle-middle class community. Hammersmith was a rougher, working class area. Newby, a day student, had to walk to St. Paul's school in Hammersmith (now relocated to Barnes), a nerve-wracking experience which may have given him a certain ability to confront hardship, as well as to deal with persons of other classes and nationalities.
The first three chapters paint a vivid picture of his Barnes environment at the time of his birth and boyhood, including visits to the Isle of Wight and, beginning when he was five, annual visits by motor car to the beach at Branscombe in South Devon. He reminds us that until 1931, the speed limit in Britain was twenty miles per hour. It was in Branscombe that he overheard a family "friend" comment to his aunt, "She didn't ought to 'ave 'ad 'im" -- a comment that seemed to still haunt him decades later. En route to Branscombe, he recalls visiting Stonehenge, where there was only one human visitor -- and a lot of sheep. The family''s drive from London to Branscombe is described in great detail -- a fascinating read if you enjoy observing the changes that the years bring about.
Chapter Seven -- "Journeys Through Darkest Hammersmith" -- is the real start of Newby's adventures as a solo traveler through foreign and dangerous regions. The daily travel required just to get to school and back, wearing St. Paul's odd school uniform and a mandatory bowler hat, carrying an umbrella in hand, and yet keeping his health and sanity intact was hair-raising. He describes Hammersmith:
Newby had hopes of attending Oxford, but he failed the mathematics section of his graduation exams (later the O-levels), and his father decided he wasn't clever enough for university, and should go into business. After eighteen months, he made the fateful decision to apprentice himself on the crew of the S/V Moshula, sailing to Australia. He was still in many ways a school boy, now thrown in with a tough crew, none of whom spoke more than a few words of English. He wrote long, brave letters home, each touchingly begun: "Dear Mummy and Daddy." But he did well, won the grudging respect of many -- not all -- of his shipmates, and was invited to sign on to the next sailing. As he writes in the closing words of The Last Grain Race, he took one last look at the vessel, walked away, and never saw her again.
World War II had begun. He joined the Navy, served as a demolitions expert in the Levant, was captured by the Italians in Sicily, was shifted around from one POW camp to another, transferred to a camp in Germany, and was finally liberated by American troops. He then married a woman he had met in Italy, and returned to the London fashion industry as a buyer.
His adventures as a buyer might well be interesting to those involved in the world of retail sales or women's fashion, but those chapters merely made me wonder how he could stand it as long as he did. Finally, he sent the famous telegram to Rio de Janeiro, and in 1956 headed for Afghanistan.
The final half of the book describes his new career as a travel writer, and especially as a writer for the late lamented American magazine Holiday. He sums up various trips rather briefly. Many of these later descriptions seem little more than diary entries. But it's difficult for a travel writer's life to be boring. He includes sketches of experiences in India, the Scottish isles, a drive from Amman to Aqaba in Jordan, Kenya, the Orient Express, Istanbul and the Pera Palace Hotel, a scary visit by him and his wife to Haiti, and a fascinating visit to St.Katharine's monastery on Mt. Sinai.
He also devotes a couple of chapters to New York, including the "adventure" of walking up Broadway from the Battery to a point north of Columbia University. Hey, I've done that. It's not really an adventure, and, from his tone, I think Newby agreed.
He ends the book with a lament for the incursion of motorized tourism into every part of the world, on roads not built for the convenience of the local population.
Who was this guy, I wondered?
I later read another of his books, The Last Grain Race, in which he describes how, as the recent graduate of a tony London "public" (prep) school, he signed on as an apprentice sailor on a Finnish sailing vessel carrying grain from Australia to Britain. His first day, while still dressed in street clothes, he was ordered to climb the rigging to the top of the mast.
Again I wondered, who was this guy?
I have a better picture of the lad now, after reading his 1982 collection of reflections, A Traveller's Life. In 35 chapters, he discusses and reflects on the travels of his active life. But he explains, in an Introduction, that he broadly defines "travels" to include any experience outside his home -- beginning with his birth, moving along to his boyhood explorations with his mother of Harrod's department store, and his experiences on his own as a school boy.
To anyone looking for a more traditional travel book, these early experiences might seem frustrating. To me, they are the best part of the book, giving a first-hand picture of life in Britain, from a schoolboy's point of view, in the 1920s and 1930s.
Newby was born, in 1919, and reared in Barnes, a district in west London, bordering the south bank of the Thames. Immediately to the north, on the other side of the river, is Hammersmith, which in turn is bordered on its north by Kensington. At the time Newby was a child, Barnes was what he describes as a middle-middle class community. Hammersmith was a rougher, working class area. Newby, a day student, had to walk to St. Paul's school in Hammersmith (now relocated to Barnes), a nerve-wracking experience which may have given him a certain ability to confront hardship, as well as to deal with persons of other classes and nationalities.
The first three chapters paint a vivid picture of his Barnes environment at the time of his birth and boyhood, including visits to the Isle of Wight and, beginning when he was five, annual visits by motor car to the beach at Branscombe in South Devon. He reminds us that until 1931, the speed limit in Britain was twenty miles per hour. It was in Branscombe that he overheard a family "friend" comment to his aunt, "She didn't ought to 'ave 'ad 'im" -- a comment that seemed to still haunt him decades later. En route to Branscombe, he recalls visiting Stonehenge, where there was only one human visitor -- and a lot of sheep. The family''s drive from London to Branscombe is described in great detail -- a fascinating read if you enjoy observing the changes that the years bring about.
Chapter Seven -- "Journeys Through Darkest Hammersmith" -- is the real start of Newby's adventures as a solo traveler through foreign and dangerous regions. The daily travel required just to get to school and back, wearing St. Paul's odd school uniform and a mandatory bowler hat, carrying an umbrella in hand, and yet keeping his health and sanity intact was hair-raising. He describes Hammersmith:
In such streets endless rows of little two-storeyed terrace houses, built of fog-blackened London brick, stood back to back, each with its outside privy, separated by little yards in which the occupiers sometimes kept rabbits or carrier pigeons, or if they were large enough turned into little gardens; the sort of London houses which, if they have survived, have become something their builders and occupiers never dreamed of, desirable residences in streets with names that now have an equally desirable period flavor.Travel through Hammersmith (now gentrified)
engendered some of the feelings of excitement, danger, and despair that some nineteenth-century travelers experience in darkest, cannibal Africa and in the twentieth century in the central highlands of New Guinea.Most of us remember similar feelings when confronted with certain neighborhoods (and their scary inhabitants) that were, objectively, far less threatening.
Newby had hopes of attending Oxford, but he failed the mathematics section of his graduation exams (later the O-levels), and his father decided he wasn't clever enough for university, and should go into business. After eighteen months, he made the fateful decision to apprentice himself on the crew of the S/V Moshula, sailing to Australia. He was still in many ways a school boy, now thrown in with a tough crew, none of whom spoke more than a few words of English. He wrote long, brave letters home, each touchingly begun: "Dear Mummy and Daddy." But he did well, won the grudging respect of many -- not all -- of his shipmates, and was invited to sign on to the next sailing. As he writes in the closing words of The Last Grain Race, he took one last look at the vessel, walked away, and never saw her again.
World War II had begun. He joined the Navy, served as a demolitions expert in the Levant, was captured by the Italians in Sicily, was shifted around from one POW camp to another, transferred to a camp in Germany, and was finally liberated by American troops. He then married a woman he had met in Italy, and returned to the London fashion industry as a buyer.
His adventures as a buyer might well be interesting to those involved in the world of retail sales or women's fashion, but those chapters merely made me wonder how he could stand it as long as he did. Finally, he sent the famous telegram to Rio de Janeiro, and in 1956 headed for Afghanistan.
The final half of the book describes his new career as a travel writer, and especially as a writer for the late lamented American magazine Holiday. He sums up various trips rather briefly. Many of these later descriptions seem little more than diary entries. But it's difficult for a travel writer's life to be boring. He includes sketches of experiences in India, the Scottish isles, a drive from Amman to Aqaba in Jordan, Kenya, the Orient Express, Istanbul and the Pera Palace Hotel, a scary visit by him and his wife to Haiti, and a fascinating visit to St.Katharine's monastery on Mt. Sinai.
He also devotes a couple of chapters to New York, including the "adventure" of walking up Broadway from the Battery to a point north of Columbia University. Hey, I've done that. It's not really an adventure, and, from his tone, I think Newby agreed.
He ends the book with a lament for the incursion of motorized tourism into every part of the world, on roads not built for the convenience of the local population.
They were made for tourists in motor cars who never got out of the their vehicles at all. No one who lived in a remote place and enjoyed doing so was safe from the panoramic road. . By 1973 they had already destroyed the solitude of the high Apennines which I knew and loved so well.Who of us hasn't uneasily shared that concern?
Even worse will be the day, which has not yet come, when the desire to be alone has finally been extinguished from the human heart.
Read
December 14, 2019I have liked most of Newby's books but this one was disappointing. Too rushed, too cynical - something written to pay the rent. If you want to read Newby try A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, or the very endearing Something Wholesale.
March 2, 2016
A collection of leftover stories that had not been otherwise written about in Newby's numerous other books. He certainly led an eventful life! While this is an often very funny and interesting book, I'd recommend it only to those who have read some of his other books first. So much of his travel writing has been collected elsewhere that the book is peppered with notes something like "I wrote about this in (title of book), so I'm not going to go into that story here." It's understandable that he would want to set the book up this way but if you are not already familiar with at least some of his other books, you will most likely feel left out of the best stories he has told.
Newby's style can take some getting used to as well. Each sentence goes on and on, and on, with parenthetical thoughts, tangents, and somewhat unrelated bon mots and non-sequiturs added in. It's a great book for those who like to do sentence diagrams! Here' a random example:
"One of the advantages or disadvantages - according to what sort of temperament one possessed - of working for such a paternalistic, some might say maternalistic, organization as The Partnership was that its members were encouraged to engage in one or other of the extramural activities which it sponsored, but when the chips were down, were expected to do so."
Not so bad on it's own, but a large percentage of the sentences are like that. Maybe I just wasn't awake enough by the the time I went to read the book, usually late at night after running around after my six year old, but I sometimes had to reread portions to make sure I picked up what he was talking about.
A worthwhile book, but really, check out 'Love and War in the Apennine's' or 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' first.
Newby's style can take some getting used to as well. Each sentence goes on and on, and on, with parenthetical thoughts, tangents, and somewhat unrelated bon mots and non-sequiturs added in. It's a great book for those who like to do sentence diagrams! Here' a random example:
"One of the advantages or disadvantages - according to what sort of temperament one possessed - of working for such a paternalistic, some might say maternalistic, organization as The Partnership was that its members were encouraged to engage in one or other of the extramural activities which it sponsored, but when the chips were down, were expected to do so."
Not so bad on it's own, but a large percentage of the sentences are like that. Maybe I just wasn't awake enough by the the time I went to read the book, usually late at night after running around after my six year old, but I sometimes had to reread portions to make sure I picked up what he was talking about.
A worthwhile book, but really, check out 'Love and War in the Apennine's' or 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' first.
April 4, 2017
A patchy if occasionally enjoyable travelogue-cum-autobiography. As a first-time Newby reader, I couldn't help but feel I had chosen the wrong entry point. Naturally, he doesn't re-tell the better known stories in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush or The Last Grain Race. Instead we get snippets of a restless life, from class-related brawls as a child in London, to an uninteresting spell as a German PoW in Italy, to later gigs as a travel journalist all over the world. Newby has a wistful, faintly bemused voice, which he puts to good use when describing the more unorthodox characters he meets. But there just isn't enough depth in A Traveller's Life for me to recommend it.
Best chapters: Birth of a Traveller (1919), Journeys Through Darkest Hammersmith (1928-36), A Visitor From Lhasa (1958), Down the Drain (1963)
Best chapters: Birth of a Traveller (1919), Journeys Through Darkest Hammersmith (1928-36), A Visitor From Lhasa (1958), Down the Drain (1963)
August 28, 2018
Nice collection of short pieces. The first chapter, in which he romps through the year of his birth, particularly good off-the-cuff history. Sewers, bicycling, sailing, war, fashion, disappearing lonely places. Does a fine job as something to dip into and be entertained by.
September 16, 2012
A note I made at the time says that this book was rather like the bottom of a bottle of wine. I skim read a lot of it.
July 23, 2025
The book hugs you gently not when it sets into its wild ruminations that seem, like every other traveler's, debauched, untethered, and boastful, but when Newby voices the imagination and dreams of every living traveler by talking about how his spirit trotted the earth through books and magazines as a child. Did not all of who have fallen in love with traveling not already traveled the whole world looking at pictures of the pyramids, waterfalls, and the Amazon? Besides this, Newby is welcome for his sensitivity to history. Traveling without history is to me but a splurgy festival of hedonistic pleasure. Newby wherever he goes investigates on the lost and forgotten sites, on how the present may - especially for those who occupy the heart of history by way of the World Wars - be a torture upon the past. And a particularly cherry-like moment to this poor soul is Newby's testimony of the brilliance of Pre Zionist Palestine. Let us weaponise him!
August 17, 2019
There were parts of this book that made me laugh outloud yet overall I found it a slog to get through.
I enjoyed Love and War in the Apennines so I like Newby but,although I love travel writing, I admit that short stories are not my favourite format. And, somehow the writing felt very dated although I don't usually find that to be the case with books written in the past...Perhaps it is too recent to feel truly historical yet too distant to feel contemporary?
Still, the premise was an interesting one: to look at travel in all its manifestations and throughout a lifetime. Maybe really a book for dipping into occasionally.
I enjoyed Love and War in the Apennines so I like Newby but,although I love travel writing, I admit that short stories are not my favourite format. And, somehow the writing felt very dated although I don't usually find that to be the case with books written in the past...Perhaps it is too recent to feel truly historical yet too distant to feel contemporary?
Still, the premise was an interesting one: to look at travel in all its manifestations and throughout a lifetime. Maybe really a book for dipping into occasionally.
April 19, 2021
It is a long time since I read Eric Newby's travel books so I was excited when I came across this one. An interesting selection of stories - as well as a travelogue of sorts this book is packed with history. The stories are in chronological order and some chapters flow easier than others. Newby has a great wit and a writing style that is unique if not to everyone's taste. His powers of observation are top-notch. His escapades take the reader to evocative places and his life experiences will make you laugh out loud or gasp. A truly inspirational writer.
March 22, 2025
A Traveller's Life by Eric Newby is a memoir that reflects on his extensive travels and experiences as a writer and adventurer. Through engaging anecdotes, Newby recounts his journeys across various countries, highlighting the challenges, cultural encounters, and personal growth he experienced. His witty and thoughtful reflections reveal the joy of exploration, the richness of human connections, and the unpredictability of life on the road.
October 2, 2021
This collection of travel pieces by Eric Newby (1919-2006) acts as a sort of informal autobiography. Each chapter represents a special point in the author’s travelling life, from his earliest adventures with his parents in their touring car and with his nurse in the pram, to his involvement in the Last Grain Race between Australia and the UK, to being a POW during World War II, to becoming travel editor of the Observer and finishing up by leaving that role in 1973 because “the mechanism of travel had changed out of all recognition.” This was a man who was born into a degree of affluence and used that as an entree into the world of travel in the mid-twentieth century. This book is a look into that world, one that none of us will ever be able to experience again. R: 3.2/5.0
October 4, 2022
liked it off and on..about 2 1/2 stars...was interested in early youth mostly but that got bogged down some, and it was a surprise to meet the working man who i'd imagined a traveler of leisure in my younger days reading his wonderful adventures on the sea and in the Hindu Kush and in the Apennines . until now i can get it for you wholesale was only a title now it's a reality.
November 20, 2024
Some lovely writing on Edwardian middle-class childhood, but Newby sadly drops off after the book becomes a scatter-gun approach to his Greatest Hits, which he reminds us constantly are already published in long form, elsewhere. Still, a 10 day cycle from Wimbledon to Italy is giving me ideas.
April 9, 2020
Slightly dated journalism and pompous overuse of the mans obviously superior intellect (!) but still a good read.
December 22, 2023
A most enjoyable read.
August 3, 2024
Pretty tedious in the main.
August 9, 2010
a good read.
Read
January 20, 2015picked it up at a book exchange in 2001/2 I remember the sections about the island off the British coast.
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews