{"product_id":"an-audience-with-an-elephant-and-other-encounters-on-the-eccentric-side","title":"An Audience With an Elephant: And Other Encounters on the Eccentric Side","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn Audience with an Elephant is a compendium of the oddest and most eccentric travels  a travel book to set alongside Norman Lewis or Eric Newby for the sheer unpredictability of its encounters and its surreal comedy. But Byron Rogers didn t venture to the ends of the earth to find singular custom and heroic idiosyncrasy: he had no need to. These are journeys to the heart of the strange and distant land of Britain.On his travels he meets the last Turkish POW in British hands  an ancient tortoise captured at Gallipoli and now resident in Great Yarmouth  and the teenaged elephant who has opened more fetes and supermarkets than any TV celebrity. Here, too, are such bizarre figures as an octogenarian triathlete, the man who (before such things were banned) held every world eating record, and the last hangman in his untroubled retirement. Rogers rides on the  ghost  train to Stalybridge (which travels but once a week, through closed stations, in one direction only), seeks out longlost gunpowder factories and a man who fell to earth, and  after recruitment as speechwriter to the Prince of Wales  becomes a courtier. Whether exploring the middle of England in the forgotten county of Northamptonshire or accompanying the last tramp through the wilder reaches of Wales, Byron Rogers chronicles a secret history of Britain that is touching, hilarious, even magical  and the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Brand: Aurum Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47335128203509,"sku":"SONG1854109014","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/5804\/8501\/files\/51ZFRHR852L.jpg?v=1763979459","url":"https:\/\/ergodebooks.com\/products\/an-audience-with-an-elephant-and-other-encounters-on-the-eccentric-side","provider":"Ergodebooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}