Something Wholesale

By Eric Newby and Eric Newey

Book Overview

Veteran travel writer Eric Newby has a massive following and is cherished as the forefather of the modern comic travel book. However, less known are his adventures during the years he spent as an apprentice and commercial buyer in the improbable trade of women's fashion.

From his repatriation as a prisoner of war in 1945 to his writing of the bestselling 'A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush' in 1956, Eric Newby's years as a commercial traveller in the world of haute couture were as full of adventure and oddity as any during his time as travel editor for the Observer.

'Something Wholesale' is Newby's hilarious and wonderfully chaotic tale of the disorder that was his life as an apprentice to the family garment firm of Lane and Newby, including hilariously recounted escapades with sudden-onset wool allergies, waist-deep predicaments in tissue paper and the soul-destroying task of matching buttons. In addition to the charming chaos of his work in the family business, it is also a warm and loving portrait of his father, a delightfully eccentric gentleman who managed to spend more energy avoiding and actively participating in disasters than he did in preserving his business.

With its quick wit, self-deprecating charm and splendidly fascinating detail, this is vintage Newby - only with a garment bag in place of a well-worn suitcase.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0007367511
• ISBN13: 9780007367511
• Release Date: January 2010
• Publisher: Harper Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.8" x 0.6" x 5.1"

Customer Reviews

Great story

This is Eric Newby's best book, even better than his travel books. On the surface, it is a book about working in his family's wholesale clothing firm, but it is really an ode to his father. The preface, in which he conveys the reader through a presumed chronology of his dad's life by describing family photos, is a classic. The characterizations of the people who work at the firm, and the buyers who come to negotiate purchases, are hilarious. Though most of the book describes Newby's comings and goings in the conduct of the business, the frequently interlaced episodes of life with father, who ran the business, conveys the sense of respect Newby had for his dad. A great book.

one of newby's best

SOMETHING WHOLESALE, by Eric Newby, was on my must-read list after reading the first two chapters of "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush." This was his account of trekking in Afghanistan in more peaceful times, and it opens with an account of the end of his career in the wholesale clothing trade. He inherited the trade from his parents, largely for lack of an alternative. Every paragraph reveals the absurdity of the business he was in; perhaps the problem was that his parents did not deal in clothes that were of particular interest to the British. (They made a dress and coat for his wife, who burst into tears when she tried them on; they were burned in their back yard.) Kevin L. Mahoney