Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance
Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance book cover

Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance

Kindle Edition

by
Price
$9.99
Publisher
Bloomsbury Reader
Publication Date

Description

Robert Crisp was an extraordinary man: a Test cricketer described by Wisden as "one of the most extraordinary men to play Test cricket"; a decorated soldier (DSO, MC); a journalist who founded the South African newspaper, Drum , and wrote for The East Anglian Daily Times and The Sunday Express ; an author, a mink farmer, an adventurer, a charmer. In short, a man of many talents. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Features & Highlights

  • I looked again at the folded map of Europe in my hand. Then I crossed the road to the Continental booking office and bought a ticket for Salzburg in Austria.
  • “Return?" asked the clerk.
  • “Definitely not," I told him.
  • In December 1966, the New Year looked exciting for fifty-five-year-old Robert Crisp. As a man whose youth was spent in constant adventure, leading a calm, domestic life in England had become a burden from which he needed to break free. Named by
  • Wisden
  • as "One of the most extraordinary men ever to play Test cricket" Crisp served as a soldier in the Second World War in Greece and North Africa for which he was decorated for bravery, later becoming a writer and journalist.With his marriage over and his sons old enough to fend for themselves, Crisp decided to start a new life. With sixty pounds in his pocket, his wartime disability pension of ten pounds a month, and a plan to write about his adventures under a pseudonym, his journey began. Through twenty columns filed from abroad over years of rustic living and travel, Crisp, as Peter White, shared his experiences of hitch-hiking through Yugoslavia, settling in a beach shack in Greece where he attempted to cultivate the stubborn land, and a nearly fatal solo boat trip around Corfu. As the first year of his dream life came to a close, he found out that the stomach pain he had been suffering was not a side effect of too much Greek wine, but cancer. With a prediction of only one year to live, he set off on a trek around Crete, his only companion a donkey with plenty of personality.Robert Crisp's account of his travels, originally serialised in the
  • Sunday Express
  • , is an honest, funny, touching account of this charming rogue's journey through a foreign land and culture in search of inner peace and happiness.

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Most Helpful Reviews

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What happened to Bob Crisp?

I read Major Bob Crisp's Brazen Chariot in the late 1970s and was fascinated by his very detailed descriptions of leading a tank platoon during the famed desert war in North Africa. It still remains a classic on the subject of small unit leadership and tank warfare. The book ends with him being severely wounded and carried off the tank, fading in and out of consciousness. I was always disappointed by ending since I never knew what happened to him. Now I know. The book is a collection of his stories written under a pseudonym in the 1960s. Apparently Crisp went on to be a successful, yet unsatisfied journalist. He is quite a character, perhaps a rogue, but it is evident that he was authenticly liked and loved by those who met him. When his children were old enough, he left his wife, his job and country and went to Greece in search of people and landscapes he had seen when stationed there during the unsuccessful British campaign of 1941. (See his work, When the Gods were Neutral.) The book describes this spiritual journey and his reflections on the meaning of life. I won't give away too much more. I finally feel satisfied to know what happened to the Bob Crisp of Brazen Chariots.

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