“And I think Chatwin spent a lot more time in libraries than he did on the road, and that is not a very glamorous thing to remind people of. But he spent years in libraries all over the world reading in many different languages, many different disciplines, and he puts most of the British writers to shame with the amount of energy and curiosity that he had and applied to each book.”

Biographer, Nicholas Shakespeare on Chatwin’s secret

From an edited version of Books and Writing, recorded at the Perth Writers Festival and first broadcast on 25/02/01 on Radio National.