This outstanding collection of pieces, illustrated with his own superb photographs, is a unique record of Newby’s travels all over the globe – and a lasting tribute to lost and fading worlds.

One of the funniest and most entertaining of all travel writers, Eric Newby has been wandering the by-ways of the world for over half a century.

Admired for his exceptional powers of observation, Newby’s genius is also to capture the unexpected, the curious and the absurd on camera.

Since his very first journey in 1938, Newby’s quest for the unknown and the unusual has been insatiable. Whether on a dangerous canoe trip down the Wakwayowkastic River, with the pastoral people in the mountainous north of Spain, or visiting the exotic archipelago of Fiji, nothing escapes his eye for unlikely or amusing detail.

A rare combination of travel writing and photography, What the Traveller Saw is an exhilarating record of Newby’s humourous adventures over the years.

‘One of the sharpest, funniest and most boisterously entertaining of all travel writers’
Jeremy Lewis, Sunday Times

‘Eric Newby seems to have an inexhaustible secret supply of that serendipity on which both travel writer and photographer depend’
Charles Nicholl, Daily Telegraph

Born in 1910 he made his first journey in 1938 when he sailed as an apprentice in the last Grain Race from Europe to Australia. He was captured during World War II and was a POW from 1942-5. After the war he entered the fashion business and book publishing. Whatever else he was doing, he always travelled on a grand scale, either under his own steam or as Travel Editor of the Observer.