IT was while he was sitting in morning management meetings that the inspiration for a book first came to Alec Le Sueur.
‘Every morning at nine o’clock we would have a management meeting with party A and party B. Party A were the communist managers and party B were the foreign managers,’ he explained.
‘We would go around the table saying what was happening in our area, and there would be the most wonderful stories. The chef would complain that three live yaks arrived in the kitchen the day before. The housekeeper would complain that all the vacuum cleaners were broken because the chambermaids didn’t realise that you had to empty the bags. They thought the dust went up the little line that went into the wall.’
In 1988, at the age of 25, Alec found himself employed as sales manager at the Holiday Inn in Lhasa, Tibet. His book, The Hotel on the Roof of the World, has sold more than 100,000 copies, has been translated into ten languages and is still in print, 17 years after first being published.
1, Keep the day job.
2, Take notes at the time.
3, Look for the unusual.
Alec Le Sueurs workshop for aspiring travel writers will be held at midday on Sunday 4 October at CCA Gallery.
The one-hour workshop costs £5. To book, go to the festival website.
‘This concrete hotel had been built completely out of keeping with its environment,’ he said. ‘There were 468 rooms, 18 suites and two presidential villas.’
In the dying days of communism, Alec’s experience was rich with amusing stories of how not to run a hotel.
‘Even though they had the finest laundry equipment in western China, no one knew how to use it, so the sheets were washed in the river, in typical Tibetan style, carried up in wheelbarrows and put out to dry in the grounds of the hotel.’
The Hotel on the Roof of the World was Alec’s first book, though he admits that when he was at Victoria College he had not been interested in English as a subject. ‘I always enjoyed writing at school, but at that time it didn’t offer English language A-level, only English literature, but reading other people’s books and going into detail about what they thought about each paragraph didn’t interest me in the slightest.’
With a love of inter-railing and backpacking, Alec knew that he wanted to travel, so he did his degree in hotel management. He worked in five-star hotels in St Tropez, Paris and London before heading to Hong Kong and then accepting a job as the sales manager for the Holiday Inn in Tibet, where he stayed for five years.
He found that there was plenty of material that he would be telling others in letters home, and he started keeping notes.
So here comes tip one for aspiring travel writers: ‘Keep notes – it’s critical. You can’t just do it from memory, you’ll miss the little details.’
Once back in Jersey with his Belgian wife Conny, he wrote The Hotel on the Roof of the World in six months. With hindsight, he admits that he would have loved to go on a creative writing course, but his experiences were enough to inspire him.
‘When I was writing, Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence had just come out – it’s very short, very simple, but very good,’ he said. His favourite travel writer is Tim Moore, who goes on odd journeys, like cycling the route of the Tour de France or taking a temperamental second-hand Rolls-Royce on The Grand Tour.
Asked about the process of finding a publisher, Alec said that he signed up with an agent. His first was Serafina Clarke. Although he had not heard of her, it turned out that she was the agent for Joanne Harris, who wrote the bestseller Chocolat.
However, his book wasn’t snapped up after two years and they parted company amicably.
He sought out publishers who specialised in travel and humour, and came to Summersdale, who have published both his books. ‘It is very satisfying to see the book come out,’ he said. ‘I had enjoyed the process.’
And Summersdale soon asked for a second book. This led Alec to consider where to write about next. ‘For 20 years I had been going backwards and forwards to Belgium, where Conny is from.’
By now he was working around a day job as well as a busy family life – he and Conny had two children, Hannah (now 19) and Ruben (17).
‘I would be writing in the evenings and at weekends, sitting with a laptop in a coffee shop and writing while the children were dropped off at their activities. It was the same humour but a different style. It’s more informative than the first book.
‘The premise is that everyone thinks Belgium is very boring, and my quest was to find interesting things.’
Alec witnessed some odd activities in his research, the most unusual being cockerel singing. As many as 100 cockerels would be lined up outside a café and bets would be taken on which of them would crow the most times over an hour.
Not just an annual tradition, it happened every weekend in some parts of the country. It was very sociable, with prizes awarded, coffee drunk before, and beer afterwards. But was it boring? ‘Yes,’ he laughs. ‘I’m afraid that that one was.’
Bottoms Up in Belgium was published in January 2014. It was dedicated to Conny, who died from breast cancer in 2011, while he was writing it.
‘I’m not sure what she would have made of it – but I did come out in favour of Belgium in the end, so maybe she would have approved,’ he said with a smile.
Alec, who is now working as practice manager at the Law Officers’ Department, went on to write several travel articles for the American magazine Food & Wine, one of the country’s most popular leisure publications.
One of his favourite pieces was when he and his children went to Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, where Raymond Blanc had just opened La Petite Ecole, a cookery school for children.
For Alec, now 52, travels since the Tibet days have been dominated by family holidays, but he admits to enjoying offbeat destinations, like the islands of the Swedish archipelago or a tree house in the south of France.
His appearance at Connections: Jersey Festival of Words is his first festival, though he has spoken many times about his Tibetan adventure to the likes of the WI.
He is keen to encourage travel writers (‘It’s a fantastic thing to do,’ he says), but the first rule that he keeps coming back to is: keep the day job.
‘Both these books have been bestsellers, but you don’t do travel writing for financial reward,’ he said. ‘Very few people make a living from it. Everyone thinks they can do it these days, and of course they can with the internet and blogs. It’s harder to get published, but there are still opportunities to experiment and put work online.
‘Everyone should find their own style,’ he added. ‘There has to be an angle, for pitching to magazines in particular. What I did in my summer holidays, and that kind of stuff, that’s not of any interest to anyone.
‘What’s new? What’s different? Why should anyone read this – apart from your mother and your best friend?’
Alec’s own mother, the environmentalist Frances Le Sueur, was a published author. She wrote two books, A Natural History of Jersey and Flora of Jersey. Does Alec think there might be a local book in him? ‘Possibly, but I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I’m too close to it. It would probably be more interesting through a foreigner’s eyes.’
