A Sense of the World by Jason Roberts

The 18th century is my favourite century. It features Captain Cook and his voyages of discoveries, the founding of European Australia, the French Revolution, Voltaire and his smirk, and the comedy commandos Boswell and Johnson. It was also a long century: beginning in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution and ending in 1815 with the demise of Napoleon at Waterloo.

Having said that, Jason Robert's book A Sense of the World takes place mainly in the 19th century, but it ought to have been an 18th century tale. It is Faction par excellence - a true story told with the marriage of the best parts of factual history and the best parts of narrative fiction.

Here is the tale of James Holman (1786-1857) who was once the most renowned traveller of his age but is now virtually unknown. Holman became crippled with rheumatism through his service in the cold fogs of the North Atlantic for the British Royal Navy, and he was suddenly struck blind by a mysterious ailment. All this by the tender age of twenty six.

In order to survive in a world where welfare was almost unknown, Holman suborned his natural adventurous spirit and accepted a stipend as a quasi-religious hermit. Yet he sought a cure for his afflictions. In doing so, Holman hit upon the radical notion that good food - especially lots of fresh fruit and vegetables - combined with generous amounts of physical exercise produces an acute sense of well-being.

Having discovered an new sense of health, Holman gave up his stipend and embarked upon three great journeys on foot that saw him, a blind man, scaling Vesuvius during an eruption, travelling the frozen wastes of Eastern Siberia (where he was arrested by the Russian secret police) and embarking on a circumnavigation of the globe that brought him to Hobart in Tasmania (amongst other places), where he became the toast of the town. Simply put, Holman wanted to be the first person to walk around the world.

Jason Roberts tells James Holman's incredible story with a deft economy of words. The picture is painted in precise but sufficient brushstrokes to produce a narrative that compels the reader to turn the page - and the next, and the next. Roberts gives us detail and pace - a rare combination of literary commodities - while 'illuminating' the world of the blind for us.

I thoroughly recommend this book, if for no other reason than to say: find out how and why a blind man in the 19th century attempted to walk around the world.