Travels in the World of Books Travels in the World of Books Nick Smith RARE BOOKS AND BERRY First published in 2010 by Rare Books and Berry High Street, Porlock, Minehead, Somerset TA24 8PU www.rarebooksandberry.co.uk © Nick Smith A CIP catalogue record for this title is Available from the British Library ISBN 978-0-9563867-0-0 Designed and typeset in Minion at Alacrity, Sandford, Somerset Printed and bound by The Cromwell Press Group, Wiltshire CONDITIONS OF SALE All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. For Phil George who started the adventures Contents Preface by Michael Berry 9 Acknowledgements 13 List of photographs 15 A note on the text 17 1The wine-dark sea 19 2The man on the Clapham omnibus 24 3Key signatures 29 4Harry Potter and the predictable anticlimax 34 5Conventional Wisden 38 6Books do furnish a room 43 7The spy who franked me 47 8 O, what a phony anniversary 52 9 Cash in a Flash on the high street 57 10 Lost library in Lambeth 62 11 The world according to Zadie 67 12 Anyone for ‘coronation cricket’? 72 13 Enchantress and the lack of magic 76 14 Under Eastern eyes 81 15 The truth about travel writing? 86 16 Exploration on the menu 91 17 Insects and vile ants 97 18 Perils of polar printing 102 7 TRAVELS IN THE WORLD OF BOOKS 19 More notes from a Persian tea house 107 20 If you want something done properly… 116 21 Yours faithfully, Ted 121 22 Letter from America 127 23 When the going gets tough 133 24 Airborne with Isabel 139 25 Hunter home from the hill 146 26 Whatever happened to the infotainment stubby? 153 27 Phases of the Moon 159 28 Breaking the ice at the North Pole 167 29 Notes from a remote island 174 30 In search of southern Spain 182 31 The road from Damascus 190 32 Friendship in the wooden world 198 33 A place I’ve never been 207 34 A Woolf in the jungles of Ceylon 215 35 Beating about the bush 224 Appendix 1 The Devil’s in the detail 233 Appendix 2 Of ink and ice: Travels with the literary Shackleton 241 Index 252 8 Preface By Michael Berry Editor, Bookdealer magazine, 2007-10 FEW YEARS AGO I bought Bookdealer,and overnight I became a magazine publisher and editor. As a seller A of new and antiquarian books I found it all a bit of a daunting adventure. Up until that point Bookdealer had been a classified advertising, listings and lineage publication with the occasional piece of editorial dedicated to the inner workings of the trade. But the internet changed all that and, with so many on-line resources for book collectors, I decided that if I were to make a go of my new business venture I’d need to do something different with it. I decided to commission reviews of new books, but I also felt that I needed a few regular columns to flesh it out for the reader. I phoned a journalist and magazine editor I’d worked with in the past – the award-wining Nick Smith – and asked him if he’d like to contribute on a regular basis. He immediately said yes, but then qualified this by adding that he knew ‘next to nothing’ about the book trade. Doesn’t matter, I told him, and explained that I just wanted him to write original material about what books meant to him as a writer, a reader and a consumer. 9 TRAVELS IN THE WORLD OF BOOKS And so the column ‘Double Booked’ was born and off Nick went to write it. I remember when the first episode turned up, containing one of his many swipes at the large book chain stores that irritate so many in the book trade. I liked it. It was informed, newsworthy and hard-hitting. Nick was a good spotter of ‘the Emperor’s new clothes’ and seemed more than happy to slaughter the occasional sacred cow. There were no other literary columns I could think of that were of its sort and we agreed that, while the ideas kept coming, the column would keep running. After about a year, just as ‘Double Booked’ was settling into a style that seemed to me to be perfect for the maga- zine, it all changed. Nick, who in his many newspaper and magazine assignments was increasingly visiting the most far-flung corners of the world, told me that what he really wanted to write about was travel and travel writing. I knew that he’d been a judge on the prestigious Thomas Cook Travel Book of the Year Award and agreed that he should. The column grew an extra title and became known as ‘More Travels in the World of Books’.At this point I felt sure that we were onto a winner and, as the articles became longer and longer, often accompanied by Nick’s own superb photography, I started to think that they should be bundled up between a set of boards. What you have in your hands – Travels in the World of Books – is the result: a collection of columns that started out being about the book trade, with the occasional reference to the travel genre, but which gradually evolved into being decidedly more travel-oriented, with the occasional reference to the book trade. And none the worse for that. 10 PREFACE You can’t write a book like this unless you’ve read a lot of books and travelled many a mile. But what really impresses me is that, while most books need just one good idea to get them started, this needed many more – in fact at least one for every time Bookdealer went to press. To sustain this over a three-year period speaks volumes for the breadth and depth of Nick’s reading, which never fails to astound me. Month after month, as I received his copy, quite often with only hours to spare, I’d phone Nick and simply say, ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ His answer was always the same: ‘Oh it’s easy, so long as you waste as much time as I do in hotels and airports.’ But it wasn’t wasted: while others squander their time and money in Duty Free shops and lobby bars, Nick read book after book and came up with thousands upon thousands of words. In the course of writing Travels in the World of Books, Nick’s been from Namibia to the North Pole, Canada to China, Libya to Lithuania, Iran to Iceland, Egypt to Ecuador. I imagine that one of the most interesting books in his possession is his passport. I’ve now come to the end of my editorship on Bookdealer, and as it passes into new hands I hope that my successor will continue with this quirky, learned and often very funny column. And I look forward to being invited to write the Preface for the second volume in a few years time. May 2010 11 Acknowledgements TRAVELS IN THE WORLD OF BOOKS could not have been written without the help of many people who kept me travelling and assisted with the text. Mike Berry commissioned the column from the word go. Mick Herron read every word of it, month-in, month-out, prior to filing. Bookdealer’s Jean Desebrock made sure that the copy was in shape for publication. At this point it’s traditional to say that any remaining errors in the text are my own, but since all three have edited this book at least once I’ve no hesitation in blaming them. Various editors have kept the writing and photography commissions coming in, and in doing so have provided me with the opportunity to travel to places I’d otherwise never have visited. So thanks to: Fiona Donald of the Daily Telegraph,Angela M.H.Schuster ofthe Explorers Journal, Carla Passino of Country Life International,Geordie Torr of Geographical,Dickon Ross ofEngineering and Technology, Sean Blair of Flipside and Steve Watkins of Outdoor Photography. No PR company has done more than BGB communi- cations to keep me airborne, so thank you Hannah, Kath, Maitha, Pegi and Sara. Quark Expeditions got me to the North Pole by sea, while Omega Watches inadvertently 13 TRAVELS IN THE WORLD OF BOOKS provided some of the travel, as did Imagine Africa. Charlotte Bell of Campbell-Bell Communications made sure that there was often a bottle of Mumm Champagne in the mix, while Chris Edwards provided plenty of sugges- tions, IT support and Guinness. Sir Christopher Ondaatje offered advice and encourage- ment, as did Alexander McCall Smith, Jenny Balfour Paul, Martin Hartley, John Hemming, Alexandra Shackleton and Shane and Nigel Winser. Heartfelt thanks are due to Suzette who designed the cover, but more importantly gave me the time to read, write and travel. Also, to our wonderful little daughter Tigger, who tried every trick in the book to drag her Daddy to the park on those Sundays when he should have been writing.