THE GENTLE ART OF TRAMPING

Of all the literary hobos, few travelled so widely as Stephen Graham (no, not him from Line of Duty). Spurred by the writings of Maxim Gorky as a young man, he escaped a stultifying clerical job in London for a simpler life closer to nature in prerevolutionary Russia, where he joined a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He’d go on to tramp his way across Europe, America and Africa. Graham wrote prolifically too and is remembered for his both practical and sentimental manual The Gentle Art of Tramping, first published in 1926. ‘Know how to tramp and you know how to live…’ he wrote, ‘tramping brings one to reality.’