Item Condition: Used; Very Good
Ever since he first read it as a boy Don
Quixote had been Mr. Croft-Cooke's
favourite novel. Two years ago he
decided to follow the routes of the
three journeys (or sallies) which his
hero made, in his role of knight-errant,
three and a half centuries ago. "As I
set out now,"" he writes, describing his
preparations for this venture, it is to
a long-awaited meeting, an appoint-
ment to which my past life has been
leading, a real and urgent appointment
which I am impatient to keep."
It is this sense of Don Quixote as a
living personality permeating the whole
of this book that gives it a quality
unique in travel books about Spain or
anywhere else. Always, as accompanied
by his own version of Sancho-Panza-
a tough young Tangerine Spaniard-
he followed in his hero's tracks, Mr.
Croft-Cooke felt Don Quixote in
person to be just a day's march ahead.
In every place the author visited, in
Argamasilla de Alba, the knight's
birthplace, in the villages of La
Mancha which were the scenes of his
exploits, on the banks of the Ebro,
and in Barcelona, where Don Quixote's