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A classic review of the travel/exploration literature (e.g., Robert Byron, Peter Fleming) with Fussell's characteristic wit and erudition, as well as his fuddy-duddy-ness, which can be annoying but comes with the package. Its a real scandal that this book is not in print.

Tired of crowded planes, sitting alongside of intolerable neighbors, having eaten tasteless meals served by pushy stewardesses, well, read this book to see what was the world like when mass and world travel was just beginning. Not a care in the world. The book describes what was it like to have no TSA and no passport requirements for traveling far and away. Written in a swift prose, Paul Fussell's book is real literature and with a long sentence like 'He who travel fastest travels alone, to be sure, but he who travels best travels with a companion if not always a lover' your curiosity will take you through descriptions of places and things that only your grandmother can remember. This book is a joy and is also great way to brush up on your British literature.

Paul Fussell is universally famous for his extensive studies on the cultural impact of the Twentieth Century Wars. In this 1980 book instead he dedicates his attention to a topic that appears as a serene hiatus between massacres: British travel literature of the 20's-30's. Fussell has no shame in affirming that the books published in this period are the best travelogues ever written, since from the 1930's on "travel" degenerated into "tourism".
The reason of the escape from England of the young literate, witty people of the WWI generation, is identified on one hand in the loathing, disgust and angst due to the terrible experiences of those that had fought in the trenches and on the other of those that bore the meagre economical war situation and restriction of liberty at home. This imperative pulsion to fuge Fussell identifies in the phrase "I Hate it Here", which recurs often as the leitmotif of his work. What writers wanted to flee was England, home, the bad weather, the poverty, so the South and in particular the sunny Mediterranean was elected as a putative home for the body and soul. However travel in the Nineteenth Century was becoming more difficult due the introduction of some limitations, like the passport in the 20s, that posed a practical and psychological problem, forcing people to realize their age, aspect and economical status together with the passing of time due to the photographs always at hand. The "passport nuissance" was accompanied by the formal identifications of many before unrecognized and unmapped frontiers, that caused other problems and reasons for reflexion.
In a long chapter, which reads almost as a bitter moral essay, the Author decribes the evolution from the Nineteenth Century exploration, to travel and to modern tourism, and the influence of this passage on travel books. In this section Fussel's nostalgia of the past is palpable and somehow displeasing, because as all travel narrative addicts know, good books have been written also after the '30's. Following the analysis of the psychological conditions of the travel writers are the practical considerations of the cheapness and sexual freedom of living abroad, that must not be forgotten. Homosexuality, pederasty, irregular unions were a major drive to living abroad.
The following chapters are devoted to the indepth rereading of the Authors Fussell thinks the most influent of the period: the never forgotten and much cried over Robert Byron (this chapter owes much to Christopher Sykes' essay on Byron in "Four Studies in Loyalty"), the cultivated, perverse and irrequietous Norman Douglas, the sun-lover and place seeking and preposition plethoric D.H. Lawrence, the moral anomaly-searcher Evelyn Waugh. Ample excerpta are quoted and commentated to explain each Author's peculiarity and importance.
The conclusive remarks are on the structure and the literary value of travel books, diction which is preferred over "travelogues" or "travel logs". Actually Fussell points out how travel books were the only acceptable way at those times of getting essays (that had passed out of fashion as literary forms) published, together with a mixed bag of poetry, impressions, adventures and anedotes. Essays were not articles in the modern sense of the word, because they had a moral or opinionated connotation. In the travel literature of this period they are joined together with memoirs, comic novels, quest, picaresque and pastoral romance and served to an eagre "exotica" seeking public.
This book is truely a treasure trove. More that deserving to be read and enjoyed, I would say, it must be studied. Anyone loving British travel narrative must have it in his library. Analyzing such a wealth of material from that age it draws out the ideas that join together these Authors and explaining them to full degree consents us to enjoy with greater insight these marvelous works.
One small notation however I must make. British travel literature of the 20s-30s has the characteristic of researching esthetic accomplishment and often this reaches exquisite climaxes. Today we still read some of these books for their sheer beauty. Never in his extensive critique Fussell draws our attention to this not secondary aspect.
Enjoy above all!

I enjoy travel books. This book is a book about travel writers and their books. By necessity it is usually superficial but it still interests me. Subsequently I have purchased some of the books referred to and looked for other books by the authors. It explains more about a world that is mostly gone. I enjoyed it. I recommend reading it!

All the old travel books it leads you to is really good. If you want to get a handle on lots of older travel books from between the wars this is a great book to have.

great

A first rate scholar has written a first rate work of travel writing... Read this book

do British readers read Fussell as British? certainly to the American ear, he seems steeped in some 19th century conception of things, elegant, verbose, verbal, and far-ranging. an example of the "ultra-stylist," each page is steeped in literary reference, mostly to books you've never heard about. Fussell was a gem.