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The Wind At My Back: A Cycling Life
A lone cyclist, disappearing into a wild landscape--brave, free, engaged with the world. It's the kind of image that sells bikes, magazines, clothing; a romantic image that all cyclists aspire to. For cycling is an activity deeply and intimately involved with landscape. The bicycle allows us to explore, to engage with wild places, and return in time for dinner. It also allows us to investigate our surroundings closer to home.
It is an activity which, for most of us, happens at a speed that allows a great deal of voyeurism. We peer into houses and shops, gardens and farmyards, fields, and hedgerows. What we see may be familiar or alien, but for the creative mind it is always stimulating. Yet--unlike with walking or swimming--the connection between cycling and creativity has only been explored in fragments.
On a bicycle, as one is exposed to sights--new or otherwise, through chance or purposeful searching--the repetitive physical actions of cycling work on the mind in a different way to those of walking. The shape of a long ride can become the shape of a novel; the atmosphere imbued by the weather, the hills, the physical exertion, can all influence a writer's tone. Our memories have a dialogue with the landscape; we remember rides through the landscape, and the landscape shapes our thinking. And for writer Paul Maunder, cycling and creativity have always been interlinked.
In The Wind on Your Back , Maunder takes a journey from the most dense centers of population to the wild places; starting from cycling in a major city, then moving through suburbia, the edgelands at the periphery of the city, then into the managed and pastoral farmland, and beyond to the sublime mountains.
He explores the experience and history of cycling in these different types of place, and seeks to understand how cycling has played a role in his own creative life as well as that of other cyclist-artists, musicians, photographers, writers, and painters. Played out against the backdrop of the British countryside, and drawing of elements of psychogeography and human geography, Maunder seeks to understand the way the outside world interacts with the creative mind, and the way our surroundings help to shape who we are.
It is an activity which, for most of us, happens at a speed that allows a great deal of voyeurism. We peer into houses and shops, gardens and farmyards, fields, and hedgerows. What we see may be familiar or alien, but for the creative mind it is always stimulating. Yet--unlike with walking or swimming--the connection between cycling and creativity has only been explored in fragments.
On a bicycle, as one is exposed to sights--new or otherwise, through chance or purposeful searching--the repetitive physical actions of cycling work on the mind in a different way to those of walking. The shape of a long ride can become the shape of a novel; the atmosphere imbued by the weather, the hills, the physical exertion, can all influence a writer's tone. Our memories have a dialogue with the landscape; we remember rides through the landscape, and the landscape shapes our thinking. And for writer Paul Maunder, cycling and creativity have always been interlinked.
In The Wind on Your Back , Maunder takes a journey from the most dense centers of population to the wild places; starting from cycling in a major city, then moving through suburbia, the edgelands at the periphery of the city, then into the managed and pastoral farmland, and beyond to the sublime mountains.
He explores the experience and history of cycling in these different types of place, and seeks to understand how cycling has played a role in his own creative life as well as that of other cyclist-artists, musicians, photographers, writers, and painters. Played out against the backdrop of the British countryside, and drawing of elements of psychogeography and human geography, Maunder seeks to understand the way the outside world interacts with the creative mind, and the way our surroundings help to shape who we are.
- GenresNonfictionCyclingTravel
272 pages, Hardcover
Published July 17, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 12, 2019
This is an excellent book. I only awarded 4* instead of 5 as this is the first non-fiction book I have reviewed and so needed to leave space..tho I cant imagine anything being much better.
I am a leisure cyclist myself and so many of the fears and delights described in this book resonated. I have also rode and known so many of the places he describes and the way the landscape is put into context and the references as to how other earlier writers have described such places.
A truly great read..try it!
I am a leisure cyclist myself and so many of the fears and delights described in this book resonated. I have also rode and known so many of the places he describes and the way the landscape is put into context and the references as to how other earlier writers have described such places.
A truly great read..try it!
June 14, 2019
The Wind At My Back is Paul Maunder’s memoir of failing to find success, both as a professional cyclist and a novelist. He finally puts these two failures together to make a successful career as a cycling journalist. In that sense I found The Wind At My Back heartening. People see success in terms of well-marked routes, whether that means a structured progression through the civil service, or making it as a professional cyclist or novelist. But there’s no shame in turning aside to explore winding byways, which might be more suited to a particular individual. And this sentiment marries nicely with The Wind At My Back’s many descriptions of cycle rides on quiet roads.
However, with no disrespect to Paul Maunder, I can perhaps see why he didn’t make it down the road of successful novel writing. His book reveals a personality more interested in places than people.
“My failure was in becoming too dependent on this sense of place, and not investigating people as much as places.”
Maunder writes of trying to overcome this, but in a revealing aside while talking about Proust, he says that empathy is something you learn. I don’t believe this is true. Certainly children seem to develop an understanding of others as they get older, but it is also the case that some people never develop this ability. And if empathy does not develop, you cannot teach it. It is possible to learn the social conventions of empathy - as Sheldon Cooper often tries to do in The Big Bang Theory. Psychology Today also tells me that people who are naturally empathetic can become more so, if they live in the sort of society that values fellow feeling. But essentially if you lack empathy you can’t learn it. I became aware of this sad fact through much reading when someone I know had the misfortune to marry a woman who had a constitutional inability to comprehend the feelings of anyone except herself.
Paul Maunder’s book does reveal a lack of natural empathy. I’m not suggesting any slur on the author’s character; but it is true to say he focuses on himself and the places he sees from his bike. You feel little about anyone else. He talks about empathy, but only in the sense of trying to learn how to do it, like another technique taught on a fiction writing course. It did not seem to be a natural part of him. He tells you about empathy but does not show it; and we all know the novelist’s rule about showing and not telling. There is a brief attempt towards the end of the book to imagine himself into the life of his two friends Daniel and Sarah, but this is soon abandoned. Apart from his father who you feel briefly as a person, it is Paul Maunder all the way. You hear about the places he has been, his cycle related philosophical reflections, which in an unfocused sort of way, are interesting. But the people he knows remain as ghostly figures beside the road.
We can’t help who we are, and if this author has trouble understanding other people, he does come to understand himself in an honest way. In those terms his book ends as a success.
However, with no disrespect to Paul Maunder, I can perhaps see why he didn’t make it down the road of successful novel writing. His book reveals a personality more interested in places than people.
“My failure was in becoming too dependent on this sense of place, and not investigating people as much as places.”
Maunder writes of trying to overcome this, but in a revealing aside while talking about Proust, he says that empathy is something you learn. I don’t believe this is true. Certainly children seem to develop an understanding of others as they get older, but it is also the case that some people never develop this ability. And if empathy does not develop, you cannot teach it. It is possible to learn the social conventions of empathy - as Sheldon Cooper often tries to do in The Big Bang Theory. Psychology Today also tells me that people who are naturally empathetic can become more so, if they live in the sort of society that values fellow feeling. But essentially if you lack empathy you can’t learn it. I became aware of this sad fact through much reading when someone I know had the misfortune to marry a woman who had a constitutional inability to comprehend the feelings of anyone except herself.
Paul Maunder’s book does reveal a lack of natural empathy. I’m not suggesting any slur on the author’s character; but it is true to say he focuses on himself and the places he sees from his bike. You feel little about anyone else. He talks about empathy, but only in the sense of trying to learn how to do it, like another technique taught on a fiction writing course. It did not seem to be a natural part of him. He tells you about empathy but does not show it; and we all know the novelist’s rule about showing and not telling. There is a brief attempt towards the end of the book to imagine himself into the life of his two friends Daniel and Sarah, but this is soon abandoned. Apart from his father who you feel briefly as a person, it is Paul Maunder all the way. You hear about the places he has been, his cycle related philosophical reflections, which in an unfocused sort of way, are interesting. But the people he knows remain as ghostly figures beside the road.
We can’t help who we are, and if this author has trouble understanding other people, he does come to understand himself in an honest way. In those terms his book ends as a success.
May 23, 2019
Ok
On not brilliant, trying to be The Escape Artist but not drawing you in and eliciting the empathy that Matt Seatons book did
On not brilliant, trying to be The Escape Artist but not drawing you in and eliciting the empathy that Matt Seatons book did
November 21, 2020
A bit niche but a wonderful exploration of landscape and literature all from the perspective of the bicycle saddle.
December 20, 2021
Beautiful description of growing up with cycling as part of your life
November 8, 2022
Really enjoyed it. Exploration & comfort
February 10, 2024
De første 100-150 sider var alt for meget skildring af engelske forstæder og lokalområder. Derefter åbner den sig, bliver mere personlig og relaterbar for en dansker - generel om cykling og livet.
June 22, 2025
very much enjoyed reading about and understanding the feeling of cycling and also knowing some of the routes
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews