Life at Full Tilt: The Selected Writings of Dervla Murphy

By Ethel Crowley and Colin Thubron

Between these covers we follow in the slipstream of the indefatigable Irish travel writer Dervla Murphy (1931–2022). Here we find descriptions of her beloved Afghanistan from her 1963 masterpiece Full Tilt, with accounts from the Peruvian Andes, of bicycling in South and East Africa and most recently of the journeys she made in the troubled territories of Palestine and Israel, published when she was eighty-five. Editor Ethel Crowley has dug into the archive to unearth her first published journalism – about her cycle through Spain in 1956 when she was just twenty-four – and has selected extracts from each of the twenty-four books which were to follow. Dervla's style of travel, to go somewhere that interested her and see who she met, made for fresh encounters every day, recorded faithfully each evening in her journal. She read hungrily to prepare for these journeys and folded her learning seamlessly into her books. What shines through is her passionate engagement both with those she encountered and the injustices they faced, and her utter independence of mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eland Publishing
• Release date: Oct 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781780602189

Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron is an acclaimed travel writer and novelist. His first books were about the Middle East – Damascus, Lebanon and Cyprus. In 1982 he travelled by car into the Soviet Union, a journey he described in Among the Russians. From these early experiences developed his classic travel books: Behind the Wall: A Journey through China (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Award), The Lost Heart of Asia, In Siberia (Prix Bouvier), Shadow of the Silk Road and To a Mountain in Tibet. Among other honors, Colin Thubron has received the Ness award of the Royal Geographical Society and the Livingstone Memorial Medal of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. In 2007 he was made CBE. He was elected President of the Royal Society of Literature from 2010 to 2017, and named an RSL Companion of Literature in 2020.

Book preview