Conquerors of Time by Trevor Fishlock, John Murray, £25, ISBN 0719555175 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
SCANNING the chapter headlines of The Conquerors of Time will not tell you much about its contents. They include: “With dauntless feet”, “Posh”, and so on. But plunge in and you will find yourself carried away with the excitement of the pioneers of what Trevor Fishlock calls “exploration in the broadest sense”.
Fishlock was a distinguished foreign correspondent for The Times and The Daily Telegraph and on all his travels was acutely aware of the adventure, invention, the labour and the costs of success and failure that had opened up the world that he had as his beat. His is a tale mostly of the 19th century, told with such enthusiasm and pace that you might feel yourself short of breath. He is a vivid and elegant writer. His admiration for the perseverance, ingenuity, intellectual rigour and sheer heroism displayed by the characters he is dealing with is plain and catching. Even perhaps familiar figures such as Brunel and Bligh of The Bounty spring vigorous and fresh out of the absorbing progress of the narrative. Enormous scope, fascinating detail; this is a whale of a book.
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