Hitch-hiking in The Manchester Guardian
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Both these books tell about foreign travel, and both of them should increase the emigration rate. Ernle Bradford' story is the more unsettling. He decided that sitting in a London office was no full and reasonable life; his wife agreed, so they sold their possessions, bought a small boat, and lived on board it for two and a half years in the Mediterranean. That was the first of many trips. Mr Bradford has An ability to relax and enjoy things, places, and more especially people. Not surprisingly he makes it clear that he thinks his way of living the best; there are traces of the snob who knows his fellow men are fools. Also the philosophising, brief though it is, is homespun enough to be a little threadbare. But this is a warm, unhurried book and mercifully only very few pages are strictly for sailors. 

Peter Beale's journeys were by comparison infinitely more hazardous. He decided to hitch-hike around the world - "for the hell of it." He was almost glad to go and very glad to get back. He labours with too much detail his trip across Europe, but from Istanbul east his story is often hilarious in spite of some formidable setbacks. It took him months to get out of Calcutta, where he put himself on the untouchable list by living with the city beggars. Indeed, he left a revealing trail behind him across Asia as he refused to conform to the "decent" standards of the Englishman abroad. The sour taste is only partly hidden by the good humour.