Eric Newby

I have just heard on Radio 4 News that Eric Newby died today. Although I never met him, I am immensely saddened.

Newby was one of the greatest travel writers of the twentieth century, and probably the funniest. My father introduced me to his work, which he himself only discovered in the last few months of his life. Dad served with the Indian Army on the North-West Frontier during the final years of World War II. In the last weeks of his cancer, when he knew he was dying, he read Newby’s A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, a brilliant account of his trek through the mountains of Nuristan in the 1950s. Ill as he was, Dad enjoyed the book hugely, roaring with laughter as he read of the struggles of Newby and his companion, Hugh Carless, to set up camp, complete with air beds, in that most inhospitable of terrain. It reminded him of his Indian days, evoking not only the country, but also its people.

I read the book after my father’s death and went on to read most of Newby’s work. He was unfailingly entertaining, with an infectious sense of humour and the ability to communicate a boundless fascination with his fellow humans, wherever, whenever and in whatever circumstances he encountered them.

His death saddens me despite his good innings of 86 years, because I know I will never read anything newly written by him again. He was quite unique, and utterly irreplaceable.