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This is primarily a photography book, showcasing some of Eric Newby's photos which he took on his many trips to many varied parts of the world. My shelving gives the locations.
Divided into chapters with one location each, and with the date visited. These are in chronological order, and date from 1938 (Round the Horn Before the Mast) to 1977 The Longest Train Ride.
Each chapter consists of a number of photographs - from 2 or 3 to 7 or 8, and an essay about the circumstances of the visit. The photographs, on the whole, are interesting and poignant, the text seems clipped or not fully formed, and is probably on the whole weaker than the pictures. The essays are from a few paragraphs to a few pages. There are a few exceptions, where the text is more significant, running to several pages, and these appear to be the chapters previously published in his A Traveller's Life collection of short stories about his travels. Many times the text is outlining the history of a place with only a little about the circumstances of his visit.
Newby also captions each photograph - these run from a brief sentence to a half page discourse on the photograph, the circumstances and the history of certain events.
So for photographs 4/5 stars **
For the text 2.5/5 stars *On balance 3/5 stars **