I’m going to follow in the footsteps of those who I think are the three defining travel writers of our time and look through the brief and unique window they gave us onto the world and into themselves.Allen begins his film chatting with the attendees of Eric Newby's memorial service in Covent Garden.
Newby was unable to complete his studies and his friends Pat Allen, Katherine Whitehorn and Adrian House of the Travellers' Club ponder whether this drove him to prove himself by enlisting on the tea clipper Moshulu.
Newby and Carliss never made it to the summit of Mir Samir but the author's self-deprecating style is best exemplified for Allen in his book of the trip A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush.
Allen is also forced to turn back but pauses at the point where a historic meeting between Newby and the professional explorer Wilfred Thesiger symbolised the beginning of the age of the traveller.
Explorer, writer and broadcaster Benedict Allen retraces part of author Laurie Lee's journey across Spain in 1935, which became the basis for his celebrated travelogue As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.
Benedict Allen follows Patrick Leigh Fermor's epic 1934 quest across Europe, tracing the inns, haystacks and castles the young adventurer stayed in as he foot-slogged his way through the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary and Romania towards Byzantium.
With his academic career punctuated by numerous school expulsions, the young Patrick Leigh Fermor put aside his troubles and set out across Europe to reach Constantinople in Turkey.