Around the World in 78 Days

Serendipity-c.f. stumbling across one of the greatest travel books, well beaten and thumbed, in local library, only to find it is sadly out of print. Nicholas Coleridge is, by all records, the first non-fictional person to succeed at this mighty challenge, four years before Palin. Not only did he take a route more faithful to Verne, via Djibouti and the Horn of Africa, but without BBC backing and five man crew. The style of writing is journalistic, rather than romantic or humerous, and if he shares a love of the passing places it was not flowing from the pages. Perhaps being true to Fogg's style he was utterley phlegmatic and pragmatic, with his eye firmly on the clock. Striding through the countries, the Old Etonian must have been the image of a latter day Fogg, kitted out from Jermyn Street and complete with swordstick.Traveller's anecdotes add depth to the book, but the true pleasure is sharing in his sense of achievement. As for myself, only by begging the librarian to make the book "Ex Stock" did I come to keep my copy for 25p, sitting to the left of Verne's on the bookshelf on the basis of numerical ordering. I hope that with his recent high profile in fiction that this work will be republished an established as a great travel account.