From this launch point comes a perfect example of Newby’s deft skills in capturing characters with a flurry of impressions and metaphors. Her is his first sight of a pushy female buyer from New York City in the process of disrupting company operations with her histrionics and scehemes: There was some divergence of opinion about how that worked out. Even Evelyn Waugh, who was sufficiently impressed by young Newby's writings to offer to contribute the preface to A Short Walk without a fee, confessed himself flummoxed by the contrasts in Newby's life. However, the two sides were probably less opposed than they may have appeared. Newby had a wife and a son and daughter to support, and full-time travel writing, let alone the expense of gathering the material, had severe limitations. I had the sensation of emerging from a country that would continue to exist more or less unchanged whatever disasters overtook the rest of mankind." Newby has a very enjoyable style of writing. Very English, very much tongue in cheek, resulting in the most terrible of circumstances being described as only minor annoyances along the way. Anon (24 October 2012). "Review of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush by Eric Newby" (PDF). Anmore Ladies' Book Club (Gentlemen Welcome). Archived (PDF) from the original on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 4 April 2013.

Gutcher, Lianne (5 February 2017). "Following Eric Newby's footsteps in the Hindu Kush". Wanderlust Travel Magazine . Retrieved 20 February 2018. Indeed, he was twice taken prisoner, and told the story of his recapture - "a very disagreeable experience" - in what many regard as his finest book, Love and War in the Apennines (1971), a superb reconstruction of how at the height of the guerrilla warfare against the Germans in Italy, he met Wanda, the girl he returned to find when the war was over and whom he subsequently married. Although A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958) is the comic masterpiece Newby will be remembered by, Love and War revealed another side to what on the surface was an uncomplicated nature, a compelling tenderness and compassion. There are passages of great depth, quite beyond the range of ordinary travel writing.Notable addition to the literature of unorthodox travel ... tough, extrovert, humorous and immensely literate' Times Literary Supplement The travel writer John Pilkington stated that the book had been an early inspiration in his life, and wrote of Newby that "He had an understated, self-deprecating sense of humour which was very British – perfect travel writing." [35] Michael Shapiro, interviewing Newby for Travelers' Tales, called the book "a classic piece of old-school British exploration, and established Newby's trademark self-deprecating wry humor" [36] and included it in WorldHum's list of favourite travel books. [37] Boyd Tonkin, writing in The Independent, called the book a "classic trek", and commented that while it is told light-heartedly, Newby, despite his comic gift, always retained his "capacity for wonderment". [38] Newby meets the explorer and travel writer Wilfred Thesiger, at the end of the book. Painting by Anthony Devas, 1944 Kari Herbert noted in The Guardian 's list of travel writer's favourite travel books that she had inherited a "well-loved copy" of the book from her father, the English polar explorer Wally Herbert. "Like Newby, I was in a soulless job, desperate for change and adventure. Reading A Short Walk was a revelation. The superbly crafted, eccentric and evocative story of his Afghan travels was like a call to arms." [34] Outside magazine includes A Short Walk among its "25 essential books for the well-read explorer", [39] while Salon.com has the book in its list of "top 10 travel books of the [20th] century". [40] The Daily Telegraph too enjoyed the English humour of the book, including it in a list of favourite travel books, and describing Newby and Carless's meeting with the explorer Wilfred Thesiger as a "hilarious segment". It quotes "We started to blow up our air-beds. 'God, you must be a couple of pansies,' said Thesiger." [41] The Swedish journalist and travel writer Tomas Löfström [ sv] noted that the meeting with Thesiger represented, in Newby's exaggerated account, a collision between two generations of travel writers who travelled, wrote, and related to strangers quite differently. [42] It had taken me ten years to discover what everyone had been telling me all along, that the Fashion Industry was not for me. After three years at the FCO in London, then as head of chancery at Budapest, there followed a sabbatical year in the department of politics at Glasgow University. In 1967-70, Carless was posted as consul general to Luanda, Angola. In 1970-73, while serving as press counsellor in Bonn, he improved the German he had learned at Sherborne and accompanied the prime minister, Edward Heath, on a helicopter tour of Bavaria's baroque churches.

urn:lcp:shortwalkinhindu00eric_0:epub:61fcce03-2a36-495b-8adb-914566f30566 Extramarc OhioLINK Library Catalog Foldoutcount 0 Identifier shortwalkinhindu00eric_0 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t8v99cm1c Isbn 0140095756 Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2010-03-01 17:23:28 Boxid IA108921 Call number 3743049 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II Donor He tells how he and his friend Carless receive brief training in mountaineering technique, on boulders and small cliffs in North Wales. The inn's waitresses are expert climbers; they take Newby and Carless up a difficult climbing route, Ivy Sepulchre [a] on Dinas Cromlech. George Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006) was an English author of travel literature.Shapiro, Michael (15 May 2006). "No. 17: 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' by Eric Newby". WorldHum . Retrieved 20 February 2018. The most successful travel writer of his generation. It's impossible to read this book without laughing aloud' Observer The "Hindu Kush" is the western part of the Himalayan Construct at Central Asia and the "top of the world." (Everest, K2 and similar record-breakers lie farther east). We Americans don't use that term so much, but consider that the Khyber Pass is part of the Hindu Kush. He intertwines his cast of characters, complex landscapes, diverse cultural customs, and histories like an Oscar winning Director. It isn't what story he is telling, but how he tells it; smooth, seamless, and adventurous.

A classic of travel writing, ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth. John waxes lyrical about Balkan venture". Southern Reporter. 19 November 2015. Archived from the original on 16 February 2018 . Retrieved 16 February 2018. The book definitely has its humorous moments. He quotes from his Bashgali(Kafir) phrasebook, which turned out to be of questionable usefulness. I still think the last few sentences of “A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush” the funniest ending to any book I have read' Geoffrey Moorhouse, The Times It was during his time at the Observer that Newby became an expert photographer, often with the help and advice of exasperated picture editors. He left the paper in 1973 to produce The World Atlas of Exploration (1975), on terms that were alleged to put him on a secure financial footing for good. Subsequently, he published books in swift succession, often going over the same ground; in 1973 he brought out two within months. The spring of rich, fruity prose seemed inexhaustible. Wanda, a splendid homemaker who stood little, if any, nonsense, saw to his creature comforts, finally settling him down, spectacularly well-fed, in a lovely house in Surrey.

Tonkin, Boyd (5 November 2010). "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, By Eric Newby". The Independent. Archived from the original on 13 June 2015 . Retrieved 20 February 2018. From 1973 until 1977, Carless headed the FCO's Latin-American department before his ministerial appointment as chargé d'affaires in Buenos Aires, where he monitored the disputed sovereignty of islands in the Beagle Channel, and the Falklands. He was appointed CMG in 1976. Following a secondment to Northern Engineering Industries, Carless served until his retirement, in 1985, as ambassador in Caracas. Rather than then returning to England, tails between their legs, they proceeded onward with a difficult climb over a mountain ridge and down into the next valley, thus passing into Nuristan. They had a number of adventures among a people so isolated that they thought Newby and Carless must be Russians, with whom they were familiar as rifle salesmen -- and so wild and incomprensible that Newby feared they must be mad. Fox, Margalit (24 October 2006). "Eric Newby, 86, Acclaimed British Travel Writer, Dies". The New York Times . Retrieved 4 April 2013.

Apparently this place belongs to a Nuristani general who lives at Kabul," said Hugh as we digested the ghastly meal I had prepared. "Not Ubaidullah Khan." Before falling asleep, having long since lost all sense of time, I looked at the calendar in my diary. The date was the twenty-third of July. Only fourteen days had passed since we had set off from Kabul. It seemed like a lifetime. p.208Newby and Carless climb 2,000 feet out of the valley to reach Arayu village. At Warna they rest by a waterfall with mulberry trees. They walk on, Newby dreaming of cool drinks and hot baths. They struggle on over a high cold pass. The last village of Nuristan, Achagaur, is peopled by Rajputs who claim to come from Arabia. They reach the top of the Arayu pass [27] and cheerfully descend on the far side. They meet the explorer and author of Arabian Sands, Wilfred Thesiger, who is disgusted by their air-beds and calls them "a couple of pansies". [28] [29] Reception [ edit ] Easy, moderate, difficult, very difficult, severe, very severe, exceptionally severe, and excessively severe.” I read A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush through its inclusion in the 2022 Year of Reading blind subscription from the English language bookstore Shakespeare and Company in Paris, France. Wieners, Brad (1 January 2003). "The 25 (Essential) Books for the Well-Read Explorer". Outside magazine. Archived from the original on 30 May 2013 . Retrieved 4 April 2013. Frater wrote that the book had "become the literary equivalent of a listed building", but that he far preferred Love and War. [29]