John Hatt on Norman Lewis

A Quiet Evening: The Travels of Norman Lewis, introduced by John Hatt

After founding Eland in 1982 with the purpose of reviving exceptional travel literature, my earliest ambition was to bring Norman Lewis to a wider readership. Therefore Eland’s first publication was A Dragon Apparent, his wonderful account of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia before those nations were engulfed in the Vietnam war.  I went on to republish what I considered to be Norman’s four best books. After passing the Eland baton to Rose Baring and Barnaby Rogerson, I stayed in close touch; but, because they managed the company with such love and skill, I took a back seat. All the same, I recently beseeched them to allow me to assemble a new anthology of Norman’s best articles. They generously agreed, and this is the result.

Read more

Read More

Life at Full Tilt, Ethel Crowley on the life and work of Dervla Murphy

Dervla was all about books: reading books, writing books, researching books, and reviewing books – dissecting them with a scalpel. This last metaphor is apt because she said that her other chosen profession would have been that of a surgeon, if life’s randomness had led that way. If her father had found work in Dublin rather than moving to a rural town like Lismore, would Dervla have followed a more conventional educational path and aimed to become a surgeon, of which she often dreamed? Then maybe she would have been Professor Murphy, eminent vascular surgeon, instead of travel writer extraordinaire.

Read more

Read More