Robert Crisp (1911–1994)

Zen and the Art of Donkey Maintenance

In December 1966, with his marriage over, his sons able to look after themselves the 55 year old Robert Crisp decides it is time to change his life and have a new start. Robert Crisp had a reputation as a hero, winning the Military Cross during World War 2, a former South African test cricketer, writer and journalist. Sometimes referred to as a ladies’ man, who was a serial womaniser, but founded The Drum newspapers for the Black Majority in Apartheid South Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice. So not a man for sitting back and relaxing allowing life to pass him by.

So at 55 Robert Crisp moves to Greece, with Sixty Pounds in his pocket plus his war pension, he planned to write about his life out there. Through his writing appearing the Sunday Express, the readers learnt about his life in Greece, his hitchhiking to what was Yugoslavia, then a communist country. Even at his age he had a near disaster when he attempted to sail around Crete.

Towards the end of his first year in Greece he had severe stomach pain and was diagnosed with cancer, so he undertook to travel around Crete, with a donkey that has a personality that ordinarily set it out but both well matched. This donkey like Crisp was stubborn which at times turns this journey around Crete in to sometimes a comedic experience at times quite touching.

This book is a collection of those travels around Crete with said donkey, in what he thought was the last year of his life; he was to live another twenty years or so. The book has been edited by his estranged son, so that too must have been hard work.

This is an unlikely positive and funny story that will do much to endear itself to the reader, that makes you want to look at Crisp and admire him for overcoming much adversity. At the same time one does get the feeling that he is rather self-centred and is only thinking of number one, especially when he did have family. Saying that this is a great read.… (mer)

Crisp's account of commanding a British tank in the Libyian Desert in 1941 is an account of the terror of taking on the bigger and better German tanks not to mention the deadly 88 -mm antiaircraft guns that the Germans discovered made excellent antitank weapons. The 88s were effective at 3000 yards while the tanks Crisp & company had were only dangerous if they got within 800 yards. This was an uneven playing field that the British had to develope strategy to overcome. This is Crisp's story of how they did it and how they turned the tide.… (mer)