Something Wholesale (22 page)
Read Something Wholesale Online
Authors: Eric Newby
I would like to thank Beatrix Miller, Editor of British
Vogue
for her kindness in allowing me to go to Paris with her fashion team, to attend the showings of the 1985 Spring/Summer Haute Couture Collections. And I would also like to thank Felicity Clark and Elizabeth Tibaris of
Vogue
for putting up with me while I was there.
ERIC NEWBY
was born in London in 1919 and was educated at St Paul’s School. In 1938, he joined the four-masted Finnish barque
Moshulu
as an apprentice and sailed in the last Grain Race from Australia to Europe, by way of Cape Horn. During World War II, he served in the Black Watch and the Special Boat Section. In 1942, he was captured and remained a prisoner-of-war until 1945. He subsequently married the girl who helped him escape, and for the next fifty years, his wife Wanda was at his side on many adventures. After the war, his world expanded still further – into the fashion business and book publishing. Whatever else he was doing, Newby always travelled on a grand scale, either under his own steam or as the Travel Editor for the
Observer
. He was made a CBE in 1994 and was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Guild of Travel Writers in 2001. Eric Newby died in 2006.
Praise for
Something Wholesale
:
‘It would strain the imagination to picture this stalwart young adventurer selling women’s clothes. We are relieved of the difficulty by his own deliciously funny description! I read it once and liked it awfully’
EVELYN WAUGH
‘No one engages his readers more enthusiastically in his adventures, or views the world through fresher eyes. With Eric as tour leader, everything becomes memorable’
Daily Mail
‘A companion to be chosen above any traveller, past or present … For it is always Newby we want more of – Newby we sympathise with – Newby’s cough, or feet, or dashed hopes, with which we suffer. Without one word of vanity in his books, he emerges effortlessly as the hero of them all’
Spectator
The Last Grain Race
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Slowly Down the Ganges
Grain Race: Pictures of Life Before the Mast in a Windjammer
Love and War in the Apennines
The Mitchell Beazley World Atlas of Exploration
Great Ascents: A Narrative History of Mountaineering
The Big Red Train Ride
A Traveller’s Life
On the Shores of the Mediterranean
A Book of Travellers’ Tales
(ed.)
Round Ireland in Low Gear
What the Traveller Saw
A Small Place in Italy
A Merry Dance Around the World: The Best of Eric Newby
Learning the Ropes: An Apprentice in the
Last of the Windjammers
Departures and Arrivals
Harper
Press
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First published by William Collins Sons & Co Ltd in 1962
Revised edition published 1970 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
Published in paperback by Picador 1985
Copyright © Eric Newby 1962, 1970, 1985
Eric Newby asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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