Eric Newby became hooked on travel books when he was eight years old. The one that got him going was Arthur Meek The Children’s Colour Book of Lands and Peoples. Young Newby had never been out of England, apart from a visit to the Channel Islands. But he was immediately seduced by the world of Mee’s six sumptuously illustrated volumes – a world which he admits even at that time seemed slightly fantastical, with its Welsh ladies in chimney-pot hats, little Irish lads bravely sporting skirts to protect themselves from fairies, and Kirghiz nomads enjoying the view from the ‘Roof of the World’.

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