Red Széll

They get the sense of adventure that is stepping out of your comfort zone, stepping away from your armchair, getting your boots on and going out.

Yeah, absolutely.

But, you know, that goes for everything that you would be reading in those days.

You know, you only had the Delhi correspondence word that, you know, you were what you were reading in The Times was actually a true reflection of what was going on.

So everything you trusted what you wrote.

And I think that's what makes.

Jules Verne is such a fascinating author because he does write as if, as you say, this is a true account.

H.G.

Wells does exactly the same.

And the reader is...

The reader probably knows that it's fiction, but how much of it is based on fact?

Yeah, no, fascinating, because they have nothing else to refer to.

You know, there's no television, there's no radio, there's no next-door neighbour who went to Goa last year to tell you that actually India's nothing like that.

So it's... I rather admire...

and feel slightly jealous, actually, of those less enlightened ages.

It's certainly something that I was talking about with the latest guest on My Life in Books, which comes out this week, R.C.

Shaw, who's a Canadian surfer and educator.

and adventurer.

And he was inspired by Joshua Slocum, the Canadian who was the first man to circumnavigate the world single-handed.

in 1898 and his account of this circumnavigation which took three years and was something like 48 000 miles his account of it sailing around the world has actually never been out of print since