Europe in the Looking Glass

by Robert Byron, Jan Morris (Foreword)

Three rich young Englishmen cross pre-World War II Europe in an old car w ith a mixture of laugh-out-loud humor and perceptive commentary on art and architecture

 


Turning a corner we suddenly found ourselves sliding down a precipice, tilted so far forward that it was necessary to hold ourselves back with our hands pressed against the dashboard, as half a dozen Apennine valleys beckoned invitingly below. Here [St Peter’s] Popes with black faces and golden crowns are wallowing twice life-size in the titanic folds of marble tablecloths, their ormolu fringes festooning upon the arms of graceful skeletons to disclose some Alice-in-Wonderland door or the grim hinges of some sepulchral grill . . .

 
Best known as the author of The Road to Oxiana , published in 1937, Robert Byron had developed his considerable writing skills on this travel book which has not been in print since 1926. It describes a journey Byron made with three friends, driving across Europe between two world wars, and mixes political and historical analysis with architectural insights, classical scholarship, and the day-to-day adventures of three young and not very experienced travelers. For fans of Robert Byron’s work this will be a discovery; for others it will be an introduction. Includes nine original sketches made by the author during his travels.

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, British Literature, Adventure, 20th Century, History

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1926

About the author

Robert Byron was an English travel writer, best known for his travelogue The Road to Oxiana. He was also a noted writer, art critic and historian.

Byron was born in 1905, and educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford. He died in 1941, during the Second World War, when the ship on which he was travelling was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Cape Wrath, Scotland, en route to Egypt.

Byron's The Road to Oxiana is considered by many modern travel writers to be the first example of great travel writing. It is an account of Byron's ten-month journey to Persia and Afghanistan in 1933-34 in the company of Christopher Sykes. Byron had previously travelled to widely different places; Mount Athos, India, the Soviet Union, Tibet. However it was in Persia and Afghanistan that he found the subject round which he forged his style of modern travel writing, when he later came to write up his account in Peking, his temporary home.

Writer Paul Fussell wrote in his 1982 book Abroad: British Literary Traveling Between The Wars that The Road to Oxiana is to the travel book what "Ulysses is to the novel between the wars, and what The Waste Land is to poetry." Travel writer Bruce Chatwin has described the book as "a sacred text, beyond criticism," and carried his copy "spineless and floodstained" on four journeys through central Asia.

However, in his day, Byron's travel books were outsold by those of writers Peter Fleming and Evelyn Waugh.

An appreciation of architecture is a strong element in Byron's writings and he was a forceful advocate for the preservation of historic buildings, and was a founder member of the Georgian Group. A philhellene, he was also amongst the pioneers in a reinterest in Byzantine History.

He attended the last Nuremberg Rally, in 1938, with Nazi sympathiser Unity Mitford. Byron knew her through his friendship with her sister Nancy Mitford, but he was an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. He died aged 35 in 1941 after his ship, the SS Jonathan Holt, was torpedoed by a u-boat in the North Atlantic.

Reviews

[Bettie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The only perspective that makes this read a step-up from the inherent zenophobia in The Clumsiest People in Europe: Or, Mrs. Mortimer's Bad-Tempered Guide to the Victorian World is the twenties between-the-wars time slot. Byron himself may have been a serious contender for the escalating hate of the British by continental Europeans as he, with pride, did not lose an ounce of his Englishness.

Smyrna

blurb - Europe in the Looking Glass is Robert Byron's travel classic, recounting a car journey across Europe in 1926, and providing a mirror on events and nationhood both then and today. Byron (a descendant of the poet) found acclaim as the author of The Road to Oxiana - an account of a trip to Afghanistan and Persia.

It tells the story of three young Englishmen travelling across the neighbouring continent in an unreliable car - encountering the rise of Italian fascism and the anarchy of Greece along the way. In other words, the book offers a compelling mirror on Europe today (a world of technocrats and populists...) with the additional benefit of being witty, colourful and full of apercus about such types as loud American tourists and unwashed German backpackers.

The conclusion offers the travellers (and all of us) a new perspective on their homeland as well as the countries and cultures they explore together.

Read by Rupert Penry-Jones.

Producer: David Roper A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

From BBC Radio 4 - Book of the week:
Europe in the Looking Glass is Robert Byron's travel classic, recounting a car journey across Europe in 1926, and providing a mirror on events and nationhood both then and today. Byron (a descendant of the poet) found acclaim as the author of The Road to Oxiana - an account of a trip to Afghanistan and Persia.

It tells the story of three young Englishmen travelling across the neighbouring continent in an unreliable car - encountering the rise of Italian fascism and the anarchy of Greece along the way. In other words, the book offers a compelling mirror on Europe today (a world of technocrats and populists...) with the additional benefit of being witty, colourful and full of apercus about such types as loud American tourists and unwashed German backpackers.

The conclusion offers the travellers (and all of us) a new perspective on their homeland as well as the countries and cultures they explore together.

In part one, they leave Grimsby and motor through northern Germany.

Read by Rupert Penry-Jones.

Producer: David Roper
A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bwmvy

[BrokenTune · Rating 1 out of 5]

I nearly gave up on this book half way through, but then reconsidered and reminded myself that the book does have redeeming features. Not many, but it does have them:

1. The description of the zeitgeist with which Byron and his friends are experiencing their adventure.

2. The description of Diana, the car. What a marvelous piece of motoring equipment she must have been, and

3. The spirit of the people that the three boys meet along the way.

As I noted along the way I couldn't help but sympathize with the people the three travelers meet, always rooting against Byron and his friends just for being pretentious louts.

Oh, and some of the descriptions of architecture are quite nice - if you're into reading about architecture, rather than looking at it.

[Hendrik · Rating 3 out of 5]

The parts about the car and the difficulties encountered on the way to Greece, were quite interesting to read. But the lengthy descriptions of architecture and sacral buildings became a bit tedious after a while. In my view, Patrick Leigh Fermor's books are a better choice regarding depictions of pre-WWII-Europe.

[Corinne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it in prep for my second trip to Italy. Although Byron was a very good writer this memoir was written when he was in the frame of mind of a privileged, pompous, immature boor. It's worth a read for some perspective of that kind in the 30's.

[Nick Pengelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A romp both hilarious and gripping. Fascinating descriptions of driving a car (and what a car!) across a Europe that was, at the time, hardly suited to the exercise (and all without the aid of Google - let alone signposts in many cases). Brilliant writing too - from a 21 year old at that!

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

On Friday, the 1st of August, 1925 three young men climbed into an overpacked touring car and drove out of London. Their destination was ambiguous; “the Balkans” was mentioned as the general direction. The three, David Henniker, Simon O’Neill and Robert Byron had met at Oxford. Byron has recently been “sent down” with a third class History degree, a result of unspecified offenses. He was just 25 and Europe In The Looking-Glass his first book.

As Jan Morris notes in a perceptive foreword to this edition, this is a “young man’s book” and as such is subject to some of the inevitable flaws that result from first endeavors. For one GoodReads reviewer the book is merely the record of the journey of three “pretentious louts.” While it is certainly clear that these three are sons of privilege and equally clear that some of Byron’s artistic and cultural judgements are cringe worthy, the careful reader will also note the emergence of a remarkable intelligence. As Morris notes, “if there are some overwrought passages of prose in Europe in the Looking-​Glass, there are also descriptions and evocations of striking beauty, to stop one suddenly in one’s patronising tracks.”

The book is not only of interest for its demonstration of that intelligence, but also for it’s anecdotal description of Europe in 1925. It is an important work because half a dozen books and eleven years later Byron published his masterpiece The Road to Oxiana. Morris is emphatic on the importance of Oxiana, declaring:

With Europe in the Looking-​Glass Byron was pioneering a new kind of travel writing. With The Road to Oxiana one can almost say that he invented another, so startlingly original was its form – a kind of artificial diary and memorandum, put together collage-​like in afterthought, and declared by scholars to have had the same sort of effect upon travel writing that Eliot and Joyce had upon fiction.

On that August night the three travelers in a Sunbeam motorcar they had christened “Diana” drove out of London and via freighter to Hamburg, Germany. From there they toured roads of varying condition to Berlin, Nuremberg and on to Rothenberg. Of Rothenberg Byron makes an admiring comment:

Of all the fantastic, outlandish forms of medieval artistic expression that have come down to us, the Bavarian style of architecture is the most eccentric. That a perfect example of a complete town of the period should have survived in its entirety, unaltered, undemolished and unextended, in the heart of the country over which the Reformation and the counter-​Reformation carried fire and sword, and the Thirty Years War cannibalism and polygamy, is one of the miracles of history. Considering her absence of natural defences and the vicissitudes that she has endured, the phenomenon of Rothenburg’s conservation is without parallel in Europe.

Writing this, seven years after World War One and fourteen years before Hitler’s War, a war that he would not himself survive, Byron could not have known that nearly half of Rothenberg would be destroyed. This is not the first of several incidents described in the book that prefigure a darker world to come. Here Byron is naive, later in the book he will presciently describe other problems more precisely.

From Rothenberg the trio drives to Salzburg and then on to Italy. By this point the book has attained a steadiness of description. Intermingled with interesting observations on art, culture and daily life is a continuing parade of good and bad cuisine, various cafes and bars and lots of “bathing” in any body of water they discover. Attached to this are incisive portraits of the various people they run across. They seem to run into a disportioncate number of English expatriates, dusty Wandervogel and the usual number of eccentric and often demanding natives. Some of these descriptions are pointedly malicious, adding fuel, perhaps, to the pretentious lout analysis. Many are, however, not only amusing but seemingly accurate. The continuing follies of humanity provides a gentle leavening of humour that enhances the tale.

The second part of the book begins with the journey to Greece, and it is with this country that the rest of the book is concerned. Robert Byron was a distant descendant of Lord Byron, who even in 1925 was regarded by many Greeks as a hero, the liberator of Greece. Robert Byron does not parade his antecedents in any particular fashion but it is clear from when the connection is made that he enjoys the recognition. Byron reflects very perceptively on our heritage of Greek culture and the significant difference between learning Greek, studying architecture, reading Homer and actually being there.

Three discussions shed light on the political future and the heritage of classicism. In Italy the trio had been exposed to the antics of the local “fascismo,” This was apparently so amusing that they tried to join the local fascist party. At this point, in 1925, Mussolini had been in power only three years but Byron isn’t truly attracted. As he notes, “Fascismo is in fact a sort of boy scout regime; but instead of staves it carries revolvers. Italy is the victim not so much of a dictatorship, but of an ochlocracy, the rule of an armed mob, and an immature mob at that”

Later in the book, however, Byron offers some critical remarks on fascism because of the situation in the Dodecanese islands. Rhodes, Corfu and 24 other islands, all spiritually part of Greece but left out of the new kingdom of Greece after independence from Turkey in 1828. The islands were handed over to Italian administration as a result of WW1 treaties. Italian policy has been to “Italianize” the local inhabitants and Byron takes up the injustice of this. He also interviews survivors of the Turkish massacre and sacking of Smyrna in 1922. Another instance where the West stood by, literally, as an international naval fleet anchored off shore watched the city burn, rescuing survivors only when the Turks were finished.

The Grecian section of the book includes a perceptive analysis of the Acropolis, its symbolism and history. Escaping Athens, the group travels south to Cape Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon. Exploring the temple Byron notices the graffiti scrawled on the temple plinth. At first he makes fun of previous visitors, such as F.A. Wilson, from Hull, 1875 or Florence and Sydney Pike in 1908. Then he remembers that Lord Byron is said to have added his details to the plinth. They search and find the poet’s mark. This leads Byron to a more sympathetic view and a fitting observation on what it means to travel:

. . . despite the vandalism and irreverence of which they seem symbolic, there is often something strangely touching about the names that are to be found on ancient monuments. It is a primitive rather than a vulgar instinct that impels the cutting of them. They imply not self-​advertisement but a deep-​felt appreciation of the spot itself and an honest pride in having visited it.

Recommended especially for readers of Patrick Leigh-Fermor.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very enjoyable read. An insightful travelogue written in the early 1920s by a young Englishman who travels through Europe with two college friends. Their mode of travel is by car, which gets them into several hilarious predicaments since they brought the car from England by boat, then across land borders and more. The car is forever breaking down which adds more dimension to their adventures and provides insight into the culture as well as the attitudes towards 'travelers'.

The next day we spent in fever of agitation between Cook's and the garage. The garage refused to mend the punctures with the requisite despatch, and it was necessary to go once every hour to see that they were being done (p 119).

Byron writes with the English dry wit, which some have interpreted as 'stuffy' but I found refreshing. Byron provides marvelous descriptions of art and architecture he experiences. I looked up several he mentioned as I was reading; interesting!

[Pollapollina Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diario di viaggio di un giovane inglese, che, negli anni ‘20, parte in auto con due amici da Londra per raggiungere la Grecia, questo libro offre tante curiosità e spunti sul passato e il presente della nostra Europa. Essendo anche io un’amante dei viaggi in auto, ero molto curiosa di leggere questo libro, che non mi ha delusa, anche se ho trovato alcune parti più noiose di altre. Ma la descrizione del tragitto da Potenza a Brindisi, attraverso strade che conosco molto bene e che in cento anni sembrano non essere cambiate, vale da sola una stella

[Marlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1925, Robert Byron and two friends set off on a journey from Britain to Greece in a car they named Diana. One needs to keep in mind that this trip was before WWII and some things have changed since then. Byron's writing is quite descriptive, sometimes finding the longest way to describe the simplest thing. He describes a lot of the architecture and art throughout Italy and Greece. Often critically. Some of their adventures were humorous, especially those involving Diana. The young men were impish, at best, and often inconsiderate and rude. Nonetheless, it was an interesting trip.

[Tomek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Autor jest protoplastą brytyjskiej literatury podróżniczej, ale to jego późniejsze książki zapracowały na ten tytuł. Tutaj mamy zawadiacką opowieść o trójce młodych i bogatych Anglików jadących samochodem przez Europę w 1924 roku. Ciekawe ze względu na czas akcji, ale jest to historia raczej pobieżna i bez głębszych refleksji.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a travel book this is pretty good, but a bit disjointed and clumsy - the elements haven't yet been refined and artfully combined in the manner of the author's superior mature work, The Road to Oxiana. When you consider, however, that the author is a twenty year old uni grad recounting his celebratory holiday with friends, it is better than it has any right to be.

[Mark West · Rating 4 out of 5]

Join your posh English boy and his pals on a rather eccentric quest through Europe in the twenties. Very funny, but being the twenties, there's lots of portents of what's coming...

[Carlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to buy Europe in the Looking Glass due to the wonderfully evocative cover on the Hesperus Press edition.
Europe in the Looking Glass is written in a digressive, conversational style by a 20 year old about driving through Europe in 1925 and is full of humour (sometimes unintended), both in Byron's strongly held artistic convictions and for arch one-liners, such as "The Romans were vulgar before the rest of Europe had even become refined."
However, Byron opens a window into a lost past, where our narrator travels from name dropping hotel to hotel, automobiles are still a novelty in themselves and the Italian fascists are a source of amusement.
There is perception of the ugly side of current affairs, as when the Great Fire of Smyrna of 1922 is discussed in the context of the influx of refugees to Greece, and in particular Piraeus (I had previously read of Smyrna in The Mask of Dimitrios). Also the Dodecanese islands, which I had not realised had been acquired from the Ottoman empire in 1912 (during an Italian-Turkish war over Libya). Chapter XVII on the Wandervogel, who are early German backpackers, is enjoyable as it explains characters who appear along the roadside and as stowaways on the boat to Patras.
However, it is the descriptions of their travails whilst travelling that make this book a joy to read. For example, the descriptions of the difficulties of transporting their car, Diana, from Corfu to Patras and then onwards by train to Corinth (they had not realised that there were no roads from Patras to Corinth) or the descriptions of the roads when finding their way out of Naples ("By the time we reached Salerno, we had taken two hours to go thirty miles. But then, as we turned inland, the road became easier, narrowing as it ascended the mountains and developing at the same time a smoother surface, by the reason of the simple fact that it had never experienced any traffic to disturb it. From now until Brindisi, 240 miles, we met one motor-drawn vehicle."
Read it and enjoy a glimpse of a time just before mass tourist travel, as seen through the eyes of an upper class Englishman, who can see the humour in their daily travels as well as the classical beauty of Italy and Greece.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holidays abroad are a mass phenomenon today, tourism being one of the most important industries on the Mediterranean seabord. This goes back to the days of the Grand Tour, that gave the whole thing its name. Robert Byron's book is a reminder that tourism has come an extremely long way, and that 1925 was probably not even half-way through that evolution, although it seems so much nearer to us than to the days of Lord Elgin. Driving across Europe in a car was an adventure and a privilege then.
Not only tourism has come a long way - Europe has, too, and Europeans as well. Byron's book came out in German for the first time just a few months before the Brexit referendum. Reading it in that hindsight reveals that England has probably changed less than the rest of Europe. Byron's descriptions of the countries he crosses reveal that Britain felt, and was, way ahead of the other nations then- yet as in the very last sentences, Byron admits that the trip has awakened his conscience of not being only English, but also European, you realise that today, the English are lagging behind in that particular field.

[Victoria Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very 20s/30s. Three young men cross Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy and end up in Greece. The car has to be lifted manually onto a small boat for the final leg. It is a charming account of the important places they visit. Quite a lot about fascists in Italy and detailed descriptions of buildings, streets, views of Athens and people. Escapist and fun