Read Barnaby Rogerson on Ralph and Molly Izzard’s trek across the Lebanese mountains in 1957 with 4 children, 2 donkeys and Elias.

‘Ralph himself was one of three role models from which Ian Fleming created the fictional James Bond. If you have ever wondered what James Bond, having settled down with Miss Moneypenny, might have been like as a father, then you need look no further.’

Jan Morris described Ralph Izzard as ‘the beau ideal of the old-school foreign correspondent … not only brave and resourceful, but also gentlemanly, widely read, kind, a bit raffish, excellent to drink with, fun to travel with, handsome but louche, honourable but thoroughly disrespectful. He was old Fleet Street personified. Not only did everyone in the business know him, but they had also known his father, Percy Izzard, the Mail’s highly respected gardening correspondent who was the inspiration behind William Boot in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Scoop.’

Such was the unusual stamp of the man who took his four young children off to walk the spine of the Lebanese mountains in 1957. Although his name is on the cover of Smelling the Breezes, it is mostly written by his wife. Smelling the Breezes was Molly’s first book and was published in 1959.

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