I nearly went lost my mind in southern Spain on the trail of Gerald Brenan

Another writer I once liked very much is Gerald Brenan. Brenan served with distinction in the first world war and afterwards carted 2,000 books to Yegen, a remote village in the Sierra Nevada, to eke out his family allowance and educate himself. He was a great walker. From his house in Yegen he walked 57 miles in two days to Almeria to buy second-hand furniture, and once he walked the 71 miles to Malaga in 28 hours to meet friends. A lifelong friendship with Ralph Partridge drew him into the Bloomsbury group of writers and artists, and he spent years trying to get his well-developed leg over Dora Carrington, Partridge’s wife. Lytton Strachey visited him at Yegen, suffering agonies from his haemorrhoids on the mule trek from the coast. Brenan’s book about his Yegen years, South From Granada, published in 1957, was an instant travel classic. When I was introduced to the book ten years ago, what passes for my imagination was enflamed by it.