First Overland

Name: First Overland
Price: 29.99 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9781805265634

London–Singapore by Land Rover

Tim Slessor, Sir David Attenborough

$29.99

Paperback

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English

C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
05 March 2026

Classic travel writing; Expeditions

Decades before Race Across the World, six friends made the epic journey from London to Singapore and back in two Land Rovers.

Why not? No-one had ever done it: one of the longest of all overland journeys, from the English Channel to Singapore. Several expeditions had tried. Some had reached the Persian deserts; a few, the Indian plains. But none had gone further: over the jungle-clad Assamese mountains, across northern Burma, to Thailand and Malaya. It was 1955. For the final 3,000 miles, it seemed, there were 'too many rivers and too few roads'. But no-one really knew...

They were undergraduates with no money, no cars

no nothing, except cool audacity. They wheedled and cajoled, coaxing the BBC into supplying film for a possible series; 'persuading' Rover to lend them two factory-fresh off-road vehicles; sweet-talking a book publisher into offering an advance. By the time they set off, their eighty-plus sponsors ranged from whiskey distillers to collapsible bucketmakers. Seven months and 12,000 miles later, two weary, police-escorted Land Rovers rolled into Singapore to flash-bulbs and champagne. Here, their bestseller is republished, with a foreword by Sir David Attenborough. He had given them that film, after all.

'Delightful ... written with humour and beguiling gusto.'

TLS

'The best travel book I have ever read.'

The Motor

By: Tim Slessor
Foreword by: Sir David Attenborough
Imprint: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm,
ISBN: 9781805265634
ISBN 10: 1805265636
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 05 March 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Tim Slessor is a British filmmaker, presenter, traveller and author. He made documentaries for the BBC for nearly fifty years and won a prestigious Peabody Award for his journalism. He is also the author of More Than Cowboys: Travels Through the History of the American West.

Reviews for First Overland: London–Singapore by Land Rover

‘Delightful ... written with humour and beguiling gusto.’ * The Times Literary Supplement * ‘The best travel book I have ever read.’ * <i<>The Motor *