Madness

I don’t know a more chilling account of a descent into madness than this – Tomalin and Hall’s story of Donald Crowhurst’s very strange un-voyage around the world.  Then there’s the indispensable companion book, ‘A Voyage for Madmen’ . It goes on to say on that cover, “Nine men set out to race each other around the world. Only one made it back.”  Then we’ve also got the US edition of the Crowhurst book, strangely titled, ‘The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst’.  As if the publicists said, “We need more pathos and less psychopath.”

Tomalin, a journalist, once observed, “The only qualities essential for real success in journalism are ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little literary ability”.  He was, however, the real thing – killed in the Golan Heights by a Syrian missile in 1973 while reporting on the Arab–Israeli War.  His daughter went on to become an accomplished biographer. So of course we have her biography of Samuel Pepys.