After You, Mr Lear by Maldwin Drummond, Seafarer Books, £18.95.
Maldwin Drummond believes that a cruise is all the better if it has a purpose, rather than “just floating about, following a salt-water desire line.” So he decided to follow the travels of Edward Lear, the Victorian artist today best known today for his nonsense verse.
Lear was also a celebrated landscape artist who lived for much of his life in southern France and Italy, and his paintings of the Mediterranean coast, along with his diaries, provided the inspiration for the quest recorded here.
On the 150th anniversary of Lear's appointment as Queen Victoria's drawing master in 1846, Maldwin and Gilly Drummond set sail in their yacht Gang Warily from near Osbourne House, Victoria's home on the Isle of Wight.
They crossed the Channel, navigated the rivers and canals of France to the Mediterranean, and sailed down the coast of Italy to Naples, all the time following Lear's travels.
So the book is a record of two journeys, one modern, one historic, intertwined to form a remarkable voyage of discovery. The book is beautifully illustrated with Lear's own paintings, drawings and verse and the author's photographs and drawings. This is a travelogue to treasure.
