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.Love and War in the Apennines (Picador Books)

by: Eric Newby

May 10, 1996
A tender and enormously inspiring little book about his experiences in Italy during World War 2, this is Eric Newby reflecting on his loss of innocence, twenty-eight years after the event. Newby would leave soldiering behind and go on to become a first-rate travel writer, a man capable of portraying passion, excitement and mystery in a calmly sophisticated prose style. In "Love and War in the Apennines" we get a mature account of his Italian exploits rather than a contemporary journal or diary.

Newby makes no apologies for transforming his memories into a seemingly seamless narrative. He delivers an enriching and thrilling account of his experiences: life is experienced as a continuum, not as edited highlights, and life in the ... Read More:
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.A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (Picador Books)

by: Eric Newby

December 04, 1981
From the pathetically inadequate preparations to the cooking of Eric Newby`s watch to the meeting with Thesiger...One absurd incident follows another as the two brave and foolish climbers fail to achieve their declared aim. It is such a funny book, every page is a joy. It is the kind of book you hope will never end. Sadly it does. Nothing to do but read it again...but, alas, I lent my copy to someone, and then it went out of print.
Luckily I managed to find a replacement in a second hand book shop.
So glad its in print again,now I can lend my copy without risk of being unable to replace it if it strays..
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.The Last Grain Race (Picador Books)

by: Eric Newby

December 01, 1995
Eric Newby is a renowned travel writer, and this is one of his first and best books. It tells of how in 1938 he signed on as an apprentice deck hand on a large steel square rigger engaged in the Australia - Europe grain trade. It is a fascinating, moving, exciting, funny account of the round trip with all its highs and lows, written with such skill, and passion I just couldn't put it down. You really don't have to be a sailor to enjoy this book,nut if you are it's even better. A collector's item.
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.On the Shores of the Mediterranean (Picador Books)

by: Eric Newby

August 09, 1985
Eric Newby is a serious travel essayist for serious travelers. A consummate pro. ON THE SHORES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN, originally published in 1984, is his chronicle of a resolute journey around the circumference of the Mediterranean, an arduous tour of ancient cities, ruins and near ruins that would have surely daunted a lesser man. Beginning at his home in Tuscany, he shepherds the reader along to Naples, Venice, Montenegro, Albania, Mt. Olympus (in Greece), Istanbul, Turkey's Mediterranean shore (the Troad), Jerusalem, the Pyramids, Tobruk (in Libya), Tunisia, Fez (in Morocco), Gibraltar, Seville (in Spain), and Nice (on the Côte d' Azur). After 484 pages (in paperback) of relatively small print, I collapsed exhausted.

Newby has an ... Read More:
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.Slowly Down the Ganges (Picador Books)

by: Eric Newby

January 14, 1983
Unlike his grounded colleague, the river traveller can indulge his bent for distraction only so far. His route is more or less fixed; certainly his destination is final. And so it is to Eric Newby's credit for eliciting from this journey 300 pages worth of erudite and witty observances, for it is essentially a procession of waterborne shuttles, one ghat to the next, punctuated only by the occasional onshore foray, the function of which mostly being to secure boat and crew for the succeeding leg. I suspect, though, that Newby could glean 300 pages from a dinghy ride in a swimming pool, and that that too would be immensely readable.

The archetypical harrassed traveller, at every turn events conspire to defeat or, at the least, humiliate ... Read More:
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.The Hills of Tuscany: A New Home in an Old Land

by: Ferenc Mate

July 05, 1999
I looked for and bought my own bit of Tuscan paradise after I read Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun. I thought that it could not be bettered. Mate has written a different sort of book - which may even equal Mayes. Only time and subsequent re-readings will tell.

I am ashamed to say that I only discovered Mate's The Hills of Tuscany just now - nearly 10 years after its original publication. Mate and his wife Candace set out on their search for their Tuscan dream house while renting a house near the gorgeous unspolt village of Palazzuolo Alto, Monte San Savino, as their base. I know the area very well and this part of the book is extremely evocative to me, including their descriptions of the trattoria Il Cacciatore (still going strong ... Read More:
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.Italian Neighbours: An Englishman in Verona

by: Tim Parks

May 03, 2001
Tim Parks has a habit of writing on subjects I'm fascinated by - Italy, football, education - so it's a bit odd that I tend to find his books hard-going and uninspiring. A Season in Verona seemed to me the work of a man who had no real enthusiasm for football, and Italian Neighbours reads like the diatribe of a bitter foreigner against a Veneto suburb and its inhabitants.

I believe Parks is trying to write an antidote to those travel books that come over all misty-eyed about sunsets in Tuscany, and so on - and I'm all for that. But there's no balance here: the book goes into considerable detail (it is 30-40% overlong) about the numerous petty annoyances of life in Italy, but has very little to say about what makes the Veneto, or its people, interesting. ... Read More:
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.The Big Red Train Ride (Picador Books)

by: Eric Newby

November 10, 1989
As someone who is planning to travel the Trans-Siberian Railway in the not too distant future I read with interest this book that follows Eric Newby's journey taken back in 1977.

Accompanied by his wife, a German photographer and their official guide from the then USSR authorities, it makes for interesting reading to go back into the "good old days" of the Cold War and revisit life behind the Iron Curtain.

There are many facts and figures about the railway and its construction which can become slightly laborious, far more interesting are the passages taken for other writings by other adventurers who travelled the route, either on the train or by sledge, in far earlier times.

Unfortunately Newby's style of writing can be quite workmanlike and as such ... Read More:
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.Desiring Italy

by: Susan Cahill

September 01, 1998
"Desiring Italy" became my inseparable travelling companion across Italy, after I found it by chance at a Roman bookstore. Not only it suggests special places to visit that are not always listed in traditional guides, it also makes them alive through their portrayal by literary masters (all women) that add their elegance, their sensitivity, their intelligence to that of the readers'. An added bonus was that I got to make their literary works real in my mind by following the steps of the characters in these magnificent settings (as Dorothea in "Middlemarch", for example).
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.La Bella Vita: Life, Love and and Food in Southern Italy

by: V. Adamoli

March 08, 2006
I was given this book to read by a friend in England, and was totally taken by surprise - this is a wonderful book; vivid, truthful and entertaining.
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