Eric Newby

Eric Newby spent four years in the fashion industry before the Second World War interrupted his career, and the war — including three years as a prisoner of the Italians — gave him the material for Love and War in the Apennines (1971), his most deeply felt book.

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) made his reputation. The premise is essentially comic: a man who has never climbed a mountain more ambitious than the Malvern Hills decides, in middle age, to travel to Afghanistan and attempt Mir Samir, a 20,000-foot peak. He takes two weeks of basic instruction in Scotland, flies to Kabul, and the adventure begins.

What makes the book is Newby's absolute willingness to admit his own limitations. He is frightened, exhausted, confused, and often laughable, and he describes all of this with a Wodehousian lightness that doesn't diminish the genuine difficulty of what he and his companion Hugh Carless achieved.

The book ends with an encounter with Wilfred Thesiger, who had just crossed the Empty Quarter, and who regards Newby's expedition with Arctic disdain. It is one of the great comedy endings in travel writing.

Newby continued writing until late in his life — books about Italy, about sailing down the Ganges, about walking in the English countryside — always with the same mixture of mild incompetence, genuine pleasure, and self-deprecating honesty.