Red Széll

And when I was, what, about nine or ten years old, it had wonderful maps of how the world was expanding because of these adventurers.

All the way up to Shackleton and Scott in the Antarctic.

And you can see it was a very short jump for me to go from Scott and Shackleton to actually picking up The White Spider by Heinrich Haare, who was one of the first men to climb Shackleton.

the Eiger in Switzerland, that sort of terrible rock face that has claimed so many lives.

And as a 13-year-old novice climber, I was hooked.

It was journeys into the impossible.

It was journeys into the unknown.

It was journeys into the limits of human endurance.

Yeah, but it's funny.

I remember talking to Stuart Turton, the mystery thriller writer, whose second book, The Devil in the Deep Water, is an account of the Batavia case.

disaster uh or scandal uh a dutch east indies ship that uh had a mutiny and i won't give any spoilers but he was telling me that he read these original accounts of these sailors exactly that and and they did the homework for him yes he he had to write a thumpingly good mystery plot around it

It's the truth element.

And this is why I love authors who have actually travelled, whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

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.