Updated: 12 Apr 2008

Eric Newby (1919 – 2006)

Eric Newby was born in London in 1919 and educated at St. Paul’s School.

He began his working life as a travelling salesmen in the rag trade, up until 1938, when he began a lifetime of wandering the world as an apprentice aboard the Finnish grain ship Moshulu, bound for Australia in ballast: just 18 years old and the only Englishman aboard.

During World War II he served in the Black Watch and the Special Boat Section. He was captured during an operation against the coast of Italy, and was held prisoner of war from 1942 to 1945. During that time he escaped for a time, and was hidden by a Slovenian family. There he met Wanda, who later married him and became his companion on a number of expeditions.

After the war he briefly worked in the women's fashion business, before setting out to assail the mountain Mir Samir, in Afganistan; the expedition eventually chronicled in A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush - probably his best-loved and most widely-known work. He became Travel Editor for the Observer newspaper, a position he held for ten years from 1964 to 1973.

Newby was awarded CBE in 1994, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers in 2001 (read more).

Newby has written prolifically over a long career; his books include:

A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958)
Slowly Down the Ganges (1966)
Great Ascents (1977)
A Traveller’s Life
Grain Race: Pictures of Life
Before the Mast in the Windjammer
The Big Red Train Ride (reissued 1985)
World Atlas of Exploration (1986)
A Book of Travellers’ Tales (1987)
Round Ireland in Low Gear (reprinted 1989)
What the Traveller Saw (1989)
A Merry Dance Around the World: The Best of Eric Newby (1995)
A Small Place in Italy (1998)
On the Shores of the Mediterranean (1998)
The Last Grain Race (1999)
Love and War in the Apennines (1999)
Something Wholesale (2002; autobiographical)

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