Somehow, in spite of everything, they get within striking distance of the summit:"Below us on every side mountains surged away it seemed forever; we looked down on glaciers and snow-covered peaks that perhaps no one has ever seen before, except from the air."Discoveries like that can't happen any more. The odd couple decide to do a crash course in climbing - four days of much mirth in Caernarvonshire ensue - and they arrive in the sub-continent hopelessly ill-equipped, with the wrong kind of tent and the wrong size boots. To make matters worse, Carless neglects to purify the water and they both get dysentery.As the expedition unfolds, Newby hones what will become his trademark style, mixing jaw-dropping descriptions of the landscape with side-splitting anecdotes about the myriad obstacles - natural and human - blocking their path. The tale is peopled with a troupe of larger-than-life characters: from grim, intransigent bureaucrats to fearless fellow explorers afflicted by incurable wanderlust. In fact, the expedition is planned just about as haphazardly as that, after Newby, staring out of his office window wishing he were elsewhere, receives a cable from Hugh Carless, a friend from the diplomatic service: "CAN YOU TRAVEL NURISTAN JUNE?". Newby accepts, before learning that Nuristan is an inhospitable region of northern Afghanistan, and that Carless plans to scale the formidable Mir Samir, nearly 20,000 feet high. "Thank God England is still cranking them out," wrote one American admirer, "it must be something in the water.""A short walk", of course, is a typical example of Newby's self-deprecation, as if tackling a formidable mountain in one of the world's remotest spots is akin to a stroll in the park, with a possible detour to the post office on the way home.

And so the would-be global traveller cut his teeth as a commercial traveller in grey, exhausted post-war England. His first assignment was to take the firm's new gown collection to Sheffield From then on he had a ball. His bizarre and hilarious adventures are exquisitely captured in Something Wholesale: My Life In The Rag Trade, which appeared in 1962, when the Beatles had their first hit single, but stuffy old Lane & Newby Ltd was still describing itself as "Mantle Manufacturers and Wholesale Costumiers". AND WHAT WAS HIS FIRST GREAT POST-WAR ADVENTURE? A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush. His 1958 story has one of the great titles in travel literature. It is arguably Newby's masterpiece - certainly his best-seller - describing a quintessential piece of old school British exploring, of the sort that makes travellers of other nationalities scratch their heads and assume that such blithe eccentricity afflicts the entire nation. For the most part, though, she is Newby's rock - grumbling but steadfast.

Her presence is essential to the narrative, providing an often withering counterpoint to Eric's more wide-eyed view of the world, mocking his hare-brained schemes and determination always to go the extra mile. Their flinty interchanges are described with understated affection. The dedication at the front of his Ganges epic says all we need to know: "To Wanda - my fellow boatwoman". BESIDES MARRYING WANDA, WHAT DID NEWBY DO WHEN HE RETURNED TO CIVVY STREET? Like many demobbed servicemen, he drifted uncertainly for a while, until his worried parents took a hand, and found him a place in the family clothing business. She dismisses her husband's flights of fancy, launching into spicy language whenever things go wrong, which they almost always do. He also gathered enough material for a truly moving book, Love And War In The Apennines (1971), which deals with the life-and-death issues of the conflict, and his everyday escapades among the Italian villagers who sheltered him.