Fat Man on a Bicycle: A Discovery of France

London: Michael Joseph, [1981]. Hardcover. 8 3/4 by 5 1/2 inches; 223 by 143 mm. 288 pages. Hardcover, bound in green cloth with gold lettering on the spine, in a mostly white jacket. Quite a nice copy, with just a minor bump to the top corner of the rear board, in a very good jacket with two narrow bands of mild dust-soiling along the top and bottom edges of the rear flap. The front panel shows a photo of the author, with his bicycle, looking across the Loire River toward the Chateau de la Voute-Polignac. Jacket enclosed in a clear, archival-quality, removable protective cover. Item #406
ISBN: 0718120728

The book is his account of an 866-ride trip across France in 1979, a trip taken for and described on BBC Radio 4 broadcasts that year. From the jacket flap: "It is a series of chain reactions in the Vernon psyche under the impact of charged particles of Frenchness, so that it is as much about England and the English as it is about France and the French." Illustrated with line drawings, and the endpapers show a map of the trip.

Price: $25.00

See all items in Bicycles
See all items by