Yesterday, in case you missed it, was the birthday of Eric Newby (1919-2006), the last of the jaunty, gentleman travel writers.
A Brit, he traveled with a feeling of, not exactly entitlement, but rather security, that came with empire, and a self-deprecating sense of humor that befit an adventurer who began his career in the world of fashion.
His first adventure (a word that today is as overused as it is misused, though in Newby's life it had real meaning) came at the age of 19, when he got a job on the Finnish windjammer Moshulu as it sailed from Ireland to Australia around Cape Horn. His book about this experience, The Last Grain Race, beautifully and hilariously captures a dying world. Though the Moshulu lives, docked on the Delaware River in Philadelphia where it serves as a restaurant and bar.
He escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Italy during World War II and was helped by a young Slovenian woman who became his wife. This too he wrote about in Love and War in the Apennines.
His most famous book is A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, a characteristically understated title for an alternately gripping and Pythonesque account of a climbing expedition in Afghanistan. I carried the book with me last month as I walked Japan's Kiso Road, just to keep things in perspective.
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