Trevor Fishlock was born in Hereford, England in 1941. As foreign correspondent, he has reported worldwide for The Times and The Daily Telegraph. His travel and reportage books have majored on Wales, where he lives. His India travelogue, Cobra Road, is an exception to this. Ironically, I discovered and bought Cobra Road in a second hand bookshop, whilst visiting the town of Fishlock’s birth.
Cobra Road (1999)
“A plaque on the outside wall said the fort ‘had the distinction of being 2/Lt Winston Churchill’s abode from where he used to send despatches back to London as a war correspondent in 1897’. For no obvious reason, except as a general admonition, another plaque next to it quoted a line from the Koran saying that every rise has a fall. The thickset walls enclosed a single whitewashed chamber with narrow port and a homely fireplace. A couple of rungs were missing in the rickety ladder to the roof. I had a sentry’s view of the broad valley and the mountains. Below, where the trade route from China to central Asia crossed the broad Swat river, Alexander led 25,000 of his men in his brief foray into India. I imagined Churchill sitting up here with his binoculars and his pencil and pad, scribbling his copy for The Daily Telegraph; and I could not help imagining, too, the subeditors in London asking in the battle-weary way of sub-editors: ‘Is there much more of this Churchill stuff?’ “
Published by John Murry
Featured image: Janntul Hasan, Pixels.com
