A short life of the author
Eric Newby (1919–2006) was born on 6 December 1919 in Hammersmith, London. At eighteen, he sailed on a Finnish grain ship around Cape Horn — the subject of The Last Grain Race (1956). During World War II, he was captured in Sicily and held as a POW in Italy, where he escaped and was sheltered by the woman he later married.
Life and Career
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) — about Newby and a friend attempting to climb Mir Samir in Afghanistan with virtually no mountaineering experience — is his masterpiece. The book is absurdly funny — two amateurs stumbling through one of the world’s most forbidding mountain ranges — but also genuinely adventurous and beautifully observed. The famous final chapter, in which they encounter Wilfred Thesiger and his contemptuous assessment of their equipment, is one of the great comic scenes in travel literature.
Slowly Down the Ganges (1966), Love and War in the Apennines (1971) — about his wartime escape in Italy — and Round Ireland in Low Gear (1987) are among his other notable books.
Major Works and Themes
Newby wrote about travel as adventure, comedy, and encounter with the unexpected. His tone is self-deprecating, his observation precise, and his prose unpretentious.
Key Works
- A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958)
- Love and War in the Apennines (1971)
Collecting Newby
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush first edition (Secker & Warburg, 1958) brings $100–$250. Newby’s extensive travel bibliography makes for an enjoyable collect. He died in 2006.