John Pilkington AN ENGLISHMAN IN PATAGONIA First Edition Signed
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John Pilkington AN ENGLISHMAN IN PATAGONIA First Edition Signed
First edition, first print hardback of AN ENGLISHMAN IN PATAGONIA by John Pilkington. Published by Century - Random Century Ltd., London in 1991. Signed by Pilkington on the title page.The book is in very good condition (Clean green cloth boards with red lettering on spine ), with only minor wear to the pictorial dust jacket, which is not price clipped (light creasing to the edges). Internally, the pages are clean and tight and there are no tears and no other inscriptions.
John Pilkington has spent much of his life travelling to faraway places. In 1982, after journeys in Africa and Latin America, he set off for Nepal. The story of his 500-mile walk across the western Nepal Himalaya was told in Into Thin Air, 1985. His interest in Asia grew further with the opening in 1986 of the border between China and Pakistan. This made it possible - for the first time for forty years - to retrace virtually the whole length of the Silk Road. His book about the journey, An Adventure on the Old Silk Road, was published by Century in 1989.
In the last two years he has written for The Sunday Times, the Sunday Correspondent and Geographical Magazine, and has contributed to several radio and television programmes. His radio programme about Patagonia, entitled The Uttermost Part of the Earth, was broadcast by the BBC's World Service in 1991. In between foreign trips he writes, draws, cycles, walks and promotes the work of Intermediate Technology, a charity to which he has donated many of the proceeds from his books.
"Patagonia, at the southernmost tip of South America, is one of the remotest regions of the world. It was reportedly named in 1520 when Magellan, taking shelter in a bay, saw a gigantic Indian on the shore. Noticing the mans prodigious feet, he cried Ha, Patag?n!, which ( allowing for his archaic Spanish and some corruption in the telling ) may be translated as 'Wow, Big Feet!' Such was Patagonias evil reputation that it provided the inspiration for Conan Doyles The Lost World. 'Patagonia?' screamed Lady Florence Dixies friends when she announced her expedition with Lord Queensberry in 1879. 'Who would ever think of going to such a place? Why, you will be eaten up by cannibals!'
Today Patagonia is made up of the southern parts of Chile and Argentina, but its still a land of lonely plains, craggy peaks and wild weather. Someone once said that Patagonia without wind would be like Hell without the Devil.
When John Pilkington, one of Britains greatest tellers of travellers tales, spent eight months journeying through Patagonia, he found that being a Patagonian is more a matter of how you feel than where you live. Patagonians are resolute dreamers immigrants whove thrown their fate to the wind. They hate towns with their petty jealousies and rivalries; given an opportunity, they always go for the unknown.
Picking his way through Patagonias half a million square miles, John unearthed stories of explorers and pioneers, of rustlers and outlaws such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and of earlier travellers such as Charles Darwin and Bruce Chatwin. Still more revealing were his own encounters: for instance with Welsh villagers singing hymns round the harmonium; refugees from Nazi Germany; Scottish evangelists awaiting Armageddon; hippy exiles; prosperous young supporters of Chilean ex-president Pinochet; and an Argentine lynch-mob who have him in mind as their victim! He examines what it is that attracts people to such a desolate land both as settlers and as travellers and reflects, too, on the ethics of travel writing."
223 pages. Illustrated with black & white photographs.
ISBN: 0 7126 3582 3
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John Pilkington AN ENGLISHMAN IN PATAGONIA First Edition Signed