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On the Shores of the Mediterranean
With his trademark charm and sharp wit, Newby leaves no stone unturned in his quest for wonderfully detailed and quirky knowledge to share with his reader. Insightful, hilarious and sheer fun, this is an adventure not to be missed, by Britain's best-loved travel guide, and father of the genre.'Why don't you start in Naples and go clockwise round the Mediterranean instead of dashing off in all directions like a lunatic?' Fortunately, Eric Newby followed his wife Wanda's advice, and so begins the wonderfully madcap adventure, ‘On the Shores of the Mediterranean’.Beginning during the Newbys' wine harvest in Tuscany, the adventurous but disaster-prone pair follow a path using every form of transportation conceivable (public bus, taxi, foot, bike, boat), from Naples to Venice, along the Adriatic to Greece, Turkey, Jerusalem and North Africa, from sipping wildly extravagant cocktails in San Marco to being cordially invited to Libya by Colonel Gaddafi.
576 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
38 people are currently reading
308 people want to read
About the author
Eric Newby
41 books169 followersGeorge Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006) was an English author of travel literature.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
September 18, 2012
Eric Newby and his equally intrepid wife, Wanda, start off at Naples to explore the shores of the Mediterranean over the course of about a year, moving in a clockwise direction.
This is an author who does meticulous research and keeps copious notes so his tales of exploration are dense with information, a lot of it historical. If you enjoy learning about the traces left by the Trojans, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Crusaders, Moors and various Ottoman sultans and beys, then you will be rewarded by reading lots of unexpected and sometimes horrible facts. There are sections on the campaigns in Gallipoli and the Western Desert - particularly moving to me, who had family involved.
I found Google essential to following all this, particularly as there are also no maps.
I would award the European chapters a 3 but, once we got towards the East (from Montenegro on) and then across North Africa, it was a 5 all the way til Gibraltar. I was particularly interested by Anatolia, of which I was entirely ignorant and now would love to visit - except that Wikipedia reports that 5 star hotels have been springing up there since 1983, when our travellers visited it. That's an engaging thing about the Newbys - they disdain travelling in comfort, so we get gruesome tales of travel by public transport and dire accommodation - all told in Newby's wonderfully dry voice.
This is an author who does meticulous research and keeps copious notes so his tales of exploration are dense with information, a lot of it historical. If you enjoy learning about the traces left by the Trojans, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Crusaders, Moors and various Ottoman sultans and beys, then you will be rewarded by reading lots of unexpected and sometimes horrible facts. There are sections on the campaigns in Gallipoli and the Western Desert - particularly moving to me, who had family involved.
I found Google essential to following all this, particularly as there are also no maps.
I would award the European chapters a 3 but, once we got towards the East (from Montenegro on) and then across North Africa, it was a 5 all the way til Gibraltar. I was particularly interested by Anatolia, of which I was entirely ignorant and now would love to visit - except that Wikipedia reports that 5 star hotels have been springing up there since 1983, when our travellers visited it. That's an engaging thing about the Newbys - they disdain travelling in comfort, so we get gruesome tales of travel by public transport and dire accommodation - all told in Newby's wonderfully dry voice.
September 22, 2018
Although I really enjoy Eric Newby's personal observations, this long travel book is overcrowded with place names you won't recognize, statistics you won't care about and historical references overloaded with even more of those.
Eric is at his best when giving his opinions about his travels and in his interactions with his wife. Unfortunately the more voluminous and tedious details bore to the point where one's eyes slide off the sentences. It's too much of not a good thing.
Eric is at his best when giving his opinions about his travels and in his interactions with his wife. Unfortunately the more voluminous and tedious details bore to the point where one's eyes slide off the sentences. It's too much of not a good thing.
August 18, 2012
I don't quite understand all the negative reviews. It's all here: long descriptive passages, frustrations with transport and accommodation, savored meals, shopping bazaars, trains, boats, buses, walks, hotels grand and sordid, random encounters, all laced with historical context that follows geography rather than chronology. While "Short Walk in the Hindu-Kush" looked forward to a more modern style of travel writing, this is a classic British travel book in the old style. It does lose a bit of steam after Libya. Like so many English travel writers, Newby seems to relish the Mediterranean of the Balkans, Greece, and Anatolia more than North Africa and Western Europe.
January 6, 2022
On the Shores of the Mediterranean is one of Eric Newby's best books. Of course, I've got to say, I would say that about any book Newby had a hand in, even the telephone book. In 1983, Newby and his hilarious wife Wanda circumnavigated the Mediterranean Sea. They traveled by bus, train,(the Venice-Simplon-Orient Express, no less) hired car, and motor hearse, as opposed to horse drawn hearse. The Newbys start at their second house, a small, unprepossessing farmhouse in Tuscany near the marble quarrying area of Carrara. There, they help with the grape harvest of their neighbors, as they always do.
The book does not literally follow the shores of the middle sea. Newby has various ideas of where he would like to start, but Wanda brings him back to reality. Ï thought you said you wanted to go back to Naples," she said. Ï do, at some stage," Newby replied. "Well, why don't you start in Naples and go clockwise around the Mediterranean instead of dashing off in all directions like a lunatic?" So they did.
With the Newbys, the reader learns of such curiosities as giant market for new and second hand shoes in Naples, where those in need of one may buy only one shoe, if they wish. In what was then the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, we read of the Carso, a rocky area with giant piles of rocks ten feet high and sixty feet long, where several rivers flow through underground caverns and of the white horses of Lipica, known as the Lippizaners who perform at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.
The Newbys alight in some unusual places. They were practically drooling at the prospect of staying in the Grand Hotel in Cetinje, Montenegro. The Grand Hotel was the only hotel in Cetinje, where they could have a hot bath "sometimes to the accompaniment of alarming clanking noises from the plumbing system." Sadly, Eric and Wanda find that the Grand Hotel, still the only hotel in Cetinje, had collapsed in an earthquake. Camping was only allowed in official campsites, which were, at that point in the year, awash with garbage, so the Newbys hid their van in a ruined monastery and spent a sleepless night with first rain drumming on the roof of the van, and second, an attack on the van by a pack of savage dogs, "...which had already made the night hideous with their barking and fighting. "
It's a constant flood of laughs and history. The reader learns a lot about Albania, including an account of a lunch during World War II when Newby, on leave from the Western Desert, was part of a lunch given for King Zog, the deposed king of Albania. This is a long book, but well worth it. Read it.
The book does not literally follow the shores of the middle sea. Newby has various ideas of where he would like to start, but Wanda brings him back to reality. Ï thought you said you wanted to go back to Naples," she said. Ï do, at some stage," Newby replied. "Well, why don't you start in Naples and go clockwise around the Mediterranean instead of dashing off in all directions like a lunatic?" So they did.
With the Newbys, the reader learns of such curiosities as giant market for new and second hand shoes in Naples, where those in need of one may buy only one shoe, if they wish. In what was then the border between Italy and Yugoslavia, we read of the Carso, a rocky area with giant piles of rocks ten feet high and sixty feet long, where several rivers flow through underground caverns and of the white horses of Lipica, known as the Lippizaners who perform at the Spanish Riding School in Vienna.
The Newbys alight in some unusual places. They were practically drooling at the prospect of staying in the Grand Hotel in Cetinje, Montenegro. The Grand Hotel was the only hotel in Cetinje, where they could have a hot bath "sometimes to the accompaniment of alarming clanking noises from the plumbing system." Sadly, Eric and Wanda find that the Grand Hotel, still the only hotel in Cetinje, had collapsed in an earthquake. Camping was only allowed in official campsites, which were, at that point in the year, awash with garbage, so the Newbys hid their van in a ruined monastery and spent a sleepless night with first rain drumming on the roof of the van, and second, an attack on the van by a pack of savage dogs, "...which had already made the night hideous with their barking and fighting. "
It's a constant flood of laughs and history. The reader learns a lot about Albania, including an account of a lunch during World War II when Newby, on leave from the Western Desert, was part of a lunch given for King Zog, the deposed king of Albania. This is a long book, but well worth it. Read it.
August 29, 2016
Hit and miss. Newby is one of the rarer breed of travel writers, hat can get the humorous tone of travel which mocks himself as much as his hosts and makes for an amusing, erudite read. He's also a history buff, as the genre expects, and this is where the book frustrated. The simple idea is traipsing along a lap of the med. The Newby's set off from Italy, and end up in Spain. The 1980s are not exactly a celebrated decade - the Iron curtain and communism were still going strong, and they're still too close to be just about memorable, but dated, and not far enough away to be a nostalgia or history trail.
It's the history that actually grates. In the right place - which happens in this book, particularly in the Turkish context - he visits a number of sites and gives the reader a concise history of the key events in accessible prose, and then talks through how he sees it hundreds of years later. Textbook stuff. But in others, it feels like he phones in a history of country X in Roman times, replacing what he did with an introduction to classical times. Which makes a frustrating and disjointed read. I can't remember if he got off the bus is Israel. But when he concentrates on his direct experience there's some very good stuff here - Turkey, Albania, Libya, Tunisia are all full of anecdotes and some excellent writing. Of course the unusual places are more interesting Hoxta's Albania or Gadaffi's Libya were barking mad places, so there's a lot of good copy to mine there. But it doesn't stop it being fun. In one stage at the end he talks to Wanda (his wife and travelling companion, who usually has the best lines) about skipping Algeria as he was already twice over the word limit for the book - a shame they cut his own experience for as much background. But diverting anyway.
It's the history that actually grates. In the right place - which happens in this book, particularly in the Turkish context - he visits a number of sites and gives the reader a concise history of the key events in accessible prose, and then talks through how he sees it hundreds of years later. Textbook stuff. But in others, it feels like he phones in a history of country X in Roman times, replacing what he did with an introduction to classical times. Which makes a frustrating and disjointed read. I can't remember if he got off the bus is Israel. But when he concentrates on his direct experience there's some very good stuff here - Turkey, Albania, Libya, Tunisia are all full of anecdotes and some excellent writing. Of course the unusual places are more interesting Hoxta's Albania or Gadaffi's Libya were barking mad places, so there's a lot of good copy to mine there. But it doesn't stop it being fun. In one stage at the end he talks to Wanda (his wife and travelling companion, who usually has the best lines) about skipping Algeria as he was already twice over the word limit for the book - a shame they cut his own experience for as much background. But diverting anyway.
October 4, 2021
By this stage of his career, Newby, travel editor of the Observer, no longer has any interest in writing a shapely sentence. If he writes one by mistake, he adds a redundant qualifying clause, pulling the punch (for instance, two Neapolitan mafia are fighting each other to the death, or some other mutually acceptable arrangement). The clubman's tones of urbanity are always approximate, since Newby, with his Slovenian wife, is strongly personally independent. This long book is three-quarters made up of historical summary and excavation. About five years before the Internet and around the time the first word processing programmes came out, it's a garbled unlovely info-dump, the kind of thing male writers, with female secretaries and editors and accommodating male readers and colleagues, used to be able to get away with. The sections where Newby is recounting his own experiences are more worthwhile, but even here he has a fatal fondness for the bathetic comparison, the contrast of e.g. Alexander the Great for a rascally swindler with comically bad English charging him too much for a mildly interesting everyday item.
July 17, 2016
First few chapters are engaging but from then on the whole it is more regurgitated facts than personal experience.
December 9, 2008
Eric Newby is much praised by critics for his distinctive style, tireless enthusiasm and ‘insider-like’ travel stories and it’s true that he has a special point of view. Not many people are as knowledgeable and well-travelled as he is. However, I have been struggling with his book for two years now.
First I sat down to read it from start to finish, but his writing was tiring and I gave up several times. I figured that the best way to get through his book was probably to pick up the relevant chapters before going on a vacation to get an insight on the places on the menu. This seemed to work for a while, because you’re less likely to overload and if you see that you only have a 20-40 pages to read, you are more likely to push through. Nevertheless, by the time we got back from our holiday in Greece and Turkey, I was sincerely glad to tuck the book away.
I can see why Newby was one of the great travel writers of our times, but I miss the sense of discovery from his accounts. He knows everything about the places he goes, but he is at times annoyingly informative, sober and well-educated for my taste. I personally miss the romanticism and mysticism from his travels. His English is very uniquely classy which is distinctive, but harder to a non-native like me to read.
http://mukikamu.wordpress.com/2008/10...
First I sat down to read it from start to finish, but his writing was tiring and I gave up several times. I figured that the best way to get through his book was probably to pick up the relevant chapters before going on a vacation to get an insight on the places on the menu. This seemed to work for a while, because you’re less likely to overload and if you see that you only have a 20-40 pages to read, you are more likely to push through. Nevertheless, by the time we got back from our holiday in Greece and Turkey, I was sincerely glad to tuck the book away.
I can see why Newby was one of the great travel writers of our times, but I miss the sense of discovery from his accounts. He knows everything about the places he goes, but he is at times annoyingly informative, sober and well-educated for my taste. I personally miss the romanticism and mysticism from his travels. His English is very uniquely classy which is distinctive, but harder to a non-native like me to read.
http://mukikamu.wordpress.com/2008/10...
December 21, 2021
My first Newby as I couldn't get my hands on 'A Short Walk...' first. It ranges from moderately interesting standard British travelogue fare, to overly lengthy lists of names and superfluous details that do little to add flavour or context. He's most guilty of this, perhaps, in one of the final chapters on holy week in Seville, wherein the relentless detailing of the minutiae of the religious processions feel terribly phoned in, as if they've been copied directly from a guide book.
So, why give it 3 stars instead of fewer? It is my humble opinion that, like many 'just slightly too long' books, that there is a good (albeit slimmer) book hiding within the pages here. It just needed a more ambitious editor to bring it out. The unhurried pace and self deprecating tone evoke a sense of a leisurely tour undertaken by a seasoned traveler. Occasional chuckles and astute observations punctuate here and there, but some sections droop as you get the sense that Newby tired of some legs of his journey.
I do like his tone, though, and suspect that some of his shorter and especially earlier writings might have the enthusiasm or exuberance that this book seems as if it could have used more of.
So, why give it 3 stars instead of fewer? It is my humble opinion that, like many 'just slightly too long' books, that there is a good (albeit slimmer) book hiding within the pages here. It just needed a more ambitious editor to bring it out. The unhurried pace and self deprecating tone evoke a sense of a leisurely tour undertaken by a seasoned traveler. Occasional chuckles and astute observations punctuate here and there, but some sections droop as you get the sense that Newby tired of some legs of his journey.
I do like his tone, though, and suspect that some of his shorter and especially earlier writings might have the enthusiasm or exuberance that this book seems as if it could have used more of.
July 22, 2011
The premise is exciting, but the author isn't much of a storyteller. His tone is too distant at the wrong times, and he goes on too many tangents to help the reader follow the points. I mean, I love a good tangent. But while he's describing something intensely, he also talks about the history. And he just rambles.
The "overviews" he gives of each place is really quite a distortion. Some chapters were great, I felt like he gave a good idea of what the place was like. Other chapters focused on his humorously unlucky adventures with people, and didn't really speak much of the place.
I think I probably would have liked the book better if I read the paperback or ebook version. But the hardcover version from the library was so heavy, that I couldn't tolerate his mindless ramblings for pages when my arms were hurting.
I did enjoy the Mount Olympus, the Jerusalem, and the Great Pyramid stories. I was greatly disappointed with the chapters in Italy and the other chapters from Greece. I only skimmed the chapters in the Anatolia and in Tunisia. By the time he got back to France, I was exhausted and closed the book.
The "overviews" he gives of each place is really quite a distortion. Some chapters were great, I felt like he gave a good idea of what the place was like. Other chapters focused on his humorously unlucky adventures with people, and didn't really speak much of the place.
I think I probably would have liked the book better if I read the paperback or ebook version. But the hardcover version from the library was so heavy, that I couldn't tolerate his mindless ramblings for pages when my arms were hurting.
I did enjoy the Mount Olympus, the Jerusalem, and the Great Pyramid stories. I was greatly disappointed with the chapters in Italy and the other chapters from Greece. I only skimmed the chapters in the Anatolia and in Tunisia. By the time he got back to France, I was exhausted and closed the book.
March 9, 2014
Having read, "Love and War in the Apennines, I was looking forward to reading this one.
This book by far took me longer to read than any other book I have ever read. The subject matter was great, but he lost me in his detail of history that just seemed to go on & on. I had to re-read many parts, because I found my mind wandering. It all just didn't connect for me.
Was glad to see some other people's reviews were in agreement with me. I am always determined to finish a book that I start, just to follow through and see if it gets any better. I'm sorry to say this was one of my least favorite books, ever.
I would recommend it to someone that is very in tune with World History, with all the dry details. I am actually glad to be finished with it, so I can get to enjoy reading again!
This book by far took me longer to read than any other book I have ever read. The subject matter was great, but he lost me in his detail of history that just seemed to go on & on. I had to re-read many parts, because I found my mind wandering. It all just didn't connect for me.
Was glad to see some other people's reviews were in agreement with me. I am always determined to finish a book that I start, just to follow through and see if it gets any better. I'm sorry to say this was one of my least favorite books, ever.
I would recommend it to someone that is very in tune with World History, with all the dry details. I am actually glad to be finished with it, so I can get to enjoy reading again!
July 25, 2011
I have always loved Eric Newby's writing and A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is an all-time favorite. Unfortunately, I found this book a little bit of a disappointment. His writings on the interactions with people are as entertaining as ever but the majority of the book is descriptive and focused especially on the history of the places and it just wasn't very engaging. Also, the book was written in the early 1980's and that part of the world has changed so much that the book feels very dated. Two stars just seemed too harsh so I bumped it up to three.
March 12, 2017
I took this book along on my five-month travels in Europe/UK and admit I set it aside to read other things, but I eventually finished it, having skipped over some of the middle. I like Eric Newby's writing, rather a self-deprecating British tone with humorous touches, but he also includes many historical references in the story as well as a bibliography and index at the end. Chapters include Italy, the Adriatic, Greece, Turkey, the Levant and North Africa. If I had been to all the places he visited, I may have got more out of it. It was an interesting read, at times entertaining and sometimes too much information for me.
March 19, 2021
I loved A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, but while this occasionally features the dry humour that made it so memorable it gets lost under the weight of historical detail that over burdens every chapter. Of course, a book that takes in places like Greece, Israel and Egypt has to share a certain amount of historical context, it’s just that it becomes so overwhelming that there’s precious little time for the writer to tell us about the places and people as he found them there and then. The book has moments of brilliance, the chapters in Albania and Tunisa are the most memorable, but large sections become too much of a chore to make it feel rewarding.
May 23, 2010
Solid writing, but not quite as entertaining as his other books I've read: A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush and The Big Red Train Ride.
November 9, 2011
I enjoy Eric Newby's writing, and as a travel writer I am naturally interested in how others write, their perceptions of places I have also visited (though often in a different decade); however this was not as entertaining as A Short Walk in the HinduKush for example. Still, it is a good read and I find it entertaining to see how much has changed since this boopk was written.
January 19, 2012
In which our narrator takes an oft-interrupted journey around the Mediterranean littoral and documents some interesting episodes. Reads like a series of National Geographic articles, quite frankly. Patchy, with some lovely anecdotes, but not anywhere near as good as his more focused works (eg the Short Walk in the Hindu Kush). Rated G. 2.5/5
February 22, 2010
This is a nice old fashioned travelogue written by a former British POW who survived the Germans in WWII. He and his wife when on to make a lovely life and forged relationships in the region, especially with the Northern Italians who helped hide him and others in that terrible time.
September 3, 2016
It got so much better when they got west of Cairo and Eric Newby had had personal experiences in that area during WW II. At that point, he brought so much more to the narrative than just description and history.
August 14, 2009
a journey to lands around the sea. easy to read as a periodic serial. does look at the less romantic side of it all.
April 5, 2017
Newby decides to travel the entire Mediterranean Sea which makes for an enjoyable travel yarn.
September 22, 2020
Loved the stories of Newby and his wife, liked the travel stories, skimmed the history.
December 9, 2020
Abit wordy but nonetheless really enjoyable. Lots of info & history.
July 24, 2022
only read chapters about Naples and Egypt a little dated but still enjoy Newby's style.
January 4, 2024
Mr Newby was an archetypally British gentleman - humorous, self-deprecating, drily witty, courageous and kind, a dying breed, we fear. His wife Wanda is a Slovenian firebrand, about whom he writes with great affection. Their long, languid potter along the shores of the Mediterranean is up to scratch with the rest of his work, though 'A Small Place in Italy' or 'Love and War in the Appenines' are perhaps better and more engaging to read. I think one criticism of this book and it's only a minor criticism is that he is possibly rather too interested in history and some of the philistine reading public might not wish to know the trifling details of some unknown person or event that happened in an obscure place back in the 'mists and abysm of time.'
June 19, 2025
A travel book that encompasses seemingly nearly every place that borders the Med. Over 500 pages, with descriptive prose rivalling writers like Hemingway and Verne, it nevertheless draws you into the Med of years past and present(ish)
April 3, 2025
Last read in 1985 and it hsn't dated much.
May 12, 2024
I enjoyed the depth of history and knowledge that went into each place explored. However it dragged a bit at the end so ended up skipping through a bit faster than the beginning. I thought Libya was interesting in the review of the battles which went down in the desert. His description of the edge of the Sahara was also fascinating.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews