An Audience with an Elephant: And Other Encounters on the Eccentric Side

by Byron Rogers

Book Overview

An Audience with an Elephant should appeal to any travel writing fan who has enjoyed Tony Hawks' quest to play tennis with the Moldovans and Pete McCarthy's bar - but here is no manufactured,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1854109014
• ISBN13: 9781854109019
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Aurum Press
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

AUDIENCE WITH AN ELEPHANT - BYRON ROGERS

Reading this collection of stories is rather like travelling Britain via its country lanes. Occasionally you can hear the far-off hum of the motorways, but it never interrupts your enjoyment of Britain's traditionally non-conformist landscape, physical and mental. The word quirky has so often become indistinguishable from twee, but here recaptures its original meaning with this collection of stories and recollections distilled from a lifetime of observation. With all due respect, forget Bill Bryson, this is the authentic voice of a Britain hidden in plain sight.

Rich and satisfying reading, the small incidents, people and places in life

This is just a lovely, lovely book. It is hard to describe it in any other way. It is a series of very short and personal articles collected together which have been written by Rogers. They are part travelogue (and very much about Wales) but mostly very personal stories, nothing about celebrities, and everything about quite everyday sort of people. Rogers style is quite easy and informal which makes these articles immensely readable. They include mostly quite unusual aspects of the usual, so in here are stories about possibly the last tramp/vagabond in Wales. His life, what he ate, how he travelled, the codes used by other vagabonds to indicate information about houses and properties. There is the story of Ali Pasha the last prisoner of War from Turkey following World War 1 (a tortoise in fact.) There are the lost children from Wales late attempt for independence who were locked in bleak monasteries and convents, a teenage elephant, and the largest sturgeon ever caught. These are punchy and readable articles which have been collected together, so you can read them bit by bit, skip back and forth or pick them up and put them down. They are linked generally by their personality and style. They are simple but rich and personal stories about ordinary people and events. Very often those at the end of their era (the last tramp in Wales, a 'Bertie Wooster' style fisherman from the 20's etc.) I would recommend this book to own rather than borrow because it is so nice to dip in and out of, they are really 'heartwarming' in the most cliched but nicest use of the word

Both a travelogue and a nature title

This blends travel and nature in the finest of methods and traditions, probing the variety and comedy of encounters with animals around the world and lending a chatty, adventure-filled tone which should particularly appeal to fans of Eric Newby. Both a travelogue and a nature title, it covers encounters with both.

Both a travelogue and a nature title

An Audience With An Elephant blends travel and nature in the finest of methods and traditions, probing the variety and comedy of encounters with animals around the world and lending a chatty, adventure-filled tone which should particularly appeal to fans of Eric Newby. Both a travelogue and a nature title, An Audience With An Elephant covers encounters with both.

A Charming Diversion

Byron Rogers is a highly regarded British Press writer, much like the Human Interest editors of all the major newspapers in the USA. He writes in a succinct, informed, yet chatty way that endears him to British readers and now with the appearance of AN AUDIENCE WITH AN ELEPHANT, a collection of his previously published observations, the American readers can delight in his gifts. This small book is a perfect companion of light reading at the bedside or as an endlessly interesting collection for brightening moments during travels. His topics vary widely - from the tortoise captured at Gallipoli, to a teenage elephant that toured the Bristish Isles as an honored guest at festivities, to the problems with being single and coping with Singles Bars. Though some my see this collection as a variation on Ripley's Believe It Or Not, it is nonetheless continuously humorous and tender. Rogers eccentricites have a way of putting the world in which we struggle into comic relief and allows us to laugh at our own foibles. Good medicine, this!