THE FOLIO SOCIETY

Eric Newby – acclaimed as 'a travel writer of near genius' (Sunday Telegraph) and 'an incomparable, shrewd and witty travel writer' (John Mortimer) - reveals his unerring instinct for a good story in this superb anthology of over 300 tales gathered in every corner of the globe, from Abyssinia to Alaska, Borneo to Bury St Edmunds.

Newby has sailed to Australia, taken a train across Siberia and a slow boat down the Ganges. His own very varied books are all enlivened by a sharp eye for curiosities - a talent just as evident here. A Book of Travellers' Tales includes part of Newby's celebrated Short Walk in the Hindu Kush - where he meets Wilfred Thesiger, dressed in 'an old tweed jacket of the sort worn by Eton boys' and complaining about English tailors - along with dazzling extracts from other great 20th-century travellers like V. S. Naipaul, Bruce Chatwin, Jan Morris, Paul Theroux and Colin Thubron. But it also covers less familiar terrain, going back to the time of Hannibal and Alexander the Great, the age of exploration, the Grand Tour and the era of the doughty Victorian adventurer.

David Livingstone is attacked by a lion, Evelyn Waugh unimpressed by the sunset over Etna, while Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is received with 'obliging civility' by 200 naked women in the Turkish baths in Sophia. Jack Kerouac takes to the road, Henry Thoreau explores the nearby local woods and Dervla Murphy dodges a randy Kurd. These are just a few of the eye-opening tales in a bulging, bountiful and truly inspiring book - not to mention the 'Advice for Travellers' section that includes a warning about camels which attack with 'a violent sneeze of half-masticated cud' and other unlikely perils.