Travel writer, born in London, UK. He worked briefly in advertising before joining a Finnish four-masted bark in 1938, an adventure described in The Last Grain Race (1956). He served in the navy during World War 2 and was captured off Sicily and held as a prisoner-of-war (19425), but managed to escape. For some years he worked in the rag trade, which he eagerly left to take A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958), and in 1963 he made a 1200 mi descent of the Ganges, described in Slowly Down the Ganges (1966). Later he became travel editor of The Observer. Other significant books are Love and War in the Apennines (1971), The Big Red Train Ride (1978), What the Traveller Saw (1989), A Merry Dance Around the World (1995), and his autobiography, Departures and Arrivals (1999). He received a lifetime achievement award by the British Guild of Writers in 2001.
Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006) was an English author of travel literature, regarded by many as one of the finest British travel writers of the 20th century.
Life
Newby was born and grew up at Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School.
After the war, he briefly worked in the women's fashion business, before setting out to climb Mir Samir in the Nuristan Mountains of Afghanistan, an expedition later chronicled in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush — probably his most widely-known work, and including an appearance by Wilfred Thesiger.
Newby's best known works include A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, The Last Grain Race, and Round Ireland in Low Gear.
Newby's life and work was profiled in ITV's The South Bank Show (director Tony Knox) in 1994. He also made notable travel films for the BBC, returning to Parma with his wife Wanda in The Travel Show (director Paul Coueslant, 1994) and visiting one of his favourite cities, Istanbul (1996).
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