This very interesting book is a travel journal with a difference. Tim Parks and his Italian partner Eleonora set off to retrace the march of Garibaldi's volunteer army, following the historic route as much as they can. It isn't always possible to know exactly where the route went, but it was always off the beaten track to evade pursuit by the Austrian and French armies. Garibaldi sent out decoys and doubled back on his own tracks in order to confuse his pursuers, and this strategy of systematic disinformation meant he was always the only one who knew where they were going. Well, the hazards a couple of hikers face are of course not comparable with the perils of a covert retreat, but now there are different dangers. Since people rarely walk long distances these days, tracks are overgrown; there are few water fountains, wells, taverns and hostelries; and roads with no pavements are choked with hostile traffic while freeways and other developments block the route. Parks muses that in modern life the connection to place which motivated the loyalty of the volunteers no longer exists. The sense of identity that galvanised and justified liberal nationalism is now fast becoming undone.

Yours truly would never, I hasten to add, have undertaken the kind of travel recounted in this book. While I also don't like what Parks disparages as conveyor-belt tourism, with crowds and queues, as independent travellers we like to visit cities and towns by rail, stopping occasionally for R&R in a village off the beaten track. Hiking is not for me, and that's why I enjoyed this book at a time when international travel is still so difficult. I would never want the blisters and sunburn; the hornets, wasps and menacing dogs; nor the uncertainty about getting a meal or a bed for the night. This is not a travel book that made me hanker for travel!

Parks is 'on a mission' to deal with two issues: firstly the revisionist theory that people did not really embrace Italian unity, which he says is disproven by the way people supported the volunteers. Yes, there were traitors and deserters, and Tuscany was not the friendly place he expected, but he won hearts and minds everywhere he went. He was the charismatic leader that Italy needed.

The second issue that Parks contests is that, contrary to popular mythmaking, Garibaldi was militarily and politically strategic. In Arezzo, Parks muses on Garibaldi's dilemma, how to end the retreat and their patriotic resistance into something that could lead to their goal of unification, and at the same time appeal to men to men who wanted to fight rather than endure the hard slog of forced marches.

Time and again historians criticise Garibaldi for his naivety and recklessness. 'His eternal instinct' ironizes David Gilmour, 'was "When in doubt, charge with the bayonet."' 'He fought by intuition', says David Kertzer in his excellent book on the Roman Republic, 'guided in no small part by emotion'. Of gentle disparagement by wise scholars there is no end. The man is made a force of nature rather than a thinking protagonist.

Why people feel the need to knock heroes off their pillars, I don't know...

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/05/03/the-heros-way-by-tim-parks/ ( )

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